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Thousands of years ago, as an undergraduate of the University of Pennsylvania, I craved and read nothing but nonfiction. My major was the History and Sociology of Science. My passion was the evolution and technology of cities, the genius lives of science-saints, Thomas Kuhn and his paradigms. I read history and biography and could not make time for fiction. I took no writing class and but a single English class (on the Romantic poets) and could not wait to be done with the stuff.

I remained in that zone for many years, until fiction and poetry began to consume more space on my shelves, and until I began reading and (consequently) writing memoir.  I don't make nearly enough room for classic nonfiction these days, but when I do, I'm returned to a happy place, and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra is, at the moment, making me happy.

I bought this book for myself in December. I've read at least four dozen books in the meantime—many of them prescribed by my teaching. I've been burning through things and Cleopatra cannot be burned through. I take my time. I turn the (paper) pages.

I'm up to page 68 on this foggy day, and I'm going to stop right here, share a passage.  Have you ever wondered what Alexandria was like in young Cleopatra's time—what she and Caesar looked out upon as they contemplated their strange, mysterious union? Let Schiff take you there:

From east to west the city measured nearly four miles, a wonderland of baths, theaters, gymnasiums, courts, temples, shrines, and synagogues. A limestone wall surrounded its perimeter, punctuated by towers, patrolled at both ends of the Canopic Way by prostitutes. During the day Alexandria echoed with the sounds of horses' hooves, the cries of porridge sellers or chickpea vendors, street performers, soothsayers, moneylenders. Its spice stands released exotic aromas, carried through the streets by a thick, salty sea breeze. Long-legged white and black ibises assembled at every intersection, foraging for crumbs.

 Oh, how I love this stuff.

I also love my own Penn students, some of whom are taking the graduation march today. Kim, Jonathan, Sara, Trixie, Ben, Lydia—my thoughts are with you on this steamy, atmospheric morning. Be well. Be safe. Travel widely. And write to me, every now and then, of your adventures.

The shimmer of this world awaits you.

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In "Show and Tell," the Louis Menand/New Yorker essay on creative writing programs (June 8/15, 2009), these words arise:

Personality is a job requirement for the workshop teacher, and it doesn't matter what sort. Teachers are the books that students read most closely, and this is especially true in the case of teachers who are living models for exactly what the student aspires one day to be—a published writer.

John Gardner, Menand says, "was a flamboyant and intensely personal teacher. His preferred pedagogical venue was the cocktail party, where he would station himself in the kitchen, near the ice trays, and consume vodka by the bottle while holding forth to the gathered disciples." Donald Barthelme, for his part, "assigned students to buy a bottle of wine and stay up all night drinking it while producing an imitation of John Ashberry's 'Three Poems'." And then there was Gordon Lish, who "had students read their stories aloud to the group, and would order them to stop as soon as he disliked what he was hearing. Many students never got past the first sentence."

I'll be teaching the advanced nonfiction workshop at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, and so Menand's essay gave me pause. I hadn't, for example, planned on having my students empty out the nearest liquor store. I also thought that I might give my students more leash than the first few words. But more than that, I plan to teach, along with the writing, so much essential reading, for it is only by reading that writers—aspiring or not—gain footholds against language and idea. I'll be encouraging students to read not me, but the books that I believe will matter most in their long-long evolution.

My course description for the few who bravely enter in:

“Maybe the best we can do is leave ourselves unprotected…” the poet-novelist Forrest Gander has written. “To approach each other and the world with as much vulnerability as we can possibly sustain.” In this advanced nonfiction workshop, we will seek, and leverage, exposure. We’ll be reading writers contemplating writing—Natalia Ginzburg, Larry Woiwode, Vivian Gornick, Terrence des Pres, Annie Dillard. We’ll be reading writers writing their own lives—Gretel Ehrlich, Anthony Doerr, Stanley Kunitz, Brooks Hansen, Jean-Dominique Bauby—as well as writers writing the lives of others—Frederick Busch on Terrence des Pres, for example, Patricia Hampl on her parents, Michael Ondaatje on the utterly cinematic characters of his childhood. The point will be to get close to the bone of things. Students should each be prepared to craft and to workshop six new short pieces of analysis, memoir, and literary reportage.

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