An excerpt from my manuscript need opinons on the flow of it

This is the shortest chapter i have so far. And well there lies the problem, i'm not exactly a minimalist, and even in this chapter i managed to use pop culture and classical literature refrences, which i hate doing. I know its gauche to show chapters unedited and at that the first draft, but something is bothering about it. I just don't feel like my main chracter in this scene in particular is feeling the intensity of his idol's real life suicide. After Mr Alan finishes reading dallas excerpt i'm wondering if i should have an interior monolgue from him, or should i just let it end. This is the first time in the manuscript that anyone notices his talent, but it is also the same scene where supporting chracters mention the suicide of the idol. I should be able to positively exploit the scenes emotion, but i'm fearful of melodrama, which is why i am not sure if i want the next scene (chapter) to be devoted to a conversation between student and pupil (there was already one earlier, or just make it introspective. In the end i know deep down, the scene is just too short, but i'm not sure how much i know it. Sorry about the atrocious grammer, i am just suffering from too much inertia to alter anything.




As the bell rung, to indicate an end to the joie de vivre, Mr. Alan Clement entered the class. Pencils and the smooth breeze capitulated, to the smell of Patchouli Soap. He placed his zarf filled with the morning’s supply of coffee, on the desk. He ran a hand through his graying, curly hair, which attached to his finger like wedding bands. On the chalkboard, an axiom was inscribed: The teacher can only assuage the learned, and contradict the unlearned.
With three score of teaching experience, Dallas favored Mr. Clement. The closer one was in age to him, the closer they were to imperfection. A distance from death allows carte blanch to imperfection, and mulligans. By chance, he also taught the class that Dallas had an above average grade in. His propensity for ‘English 301: Creative Writing’, and its position as first class of the day, gave him enough mania too last until lunch. At least that was his excuse for falling to achieve above a seventy-percent in any postprandial classes. Irony breathed into his ear, chanting his motto ‘D for Dallas’, he chuckled at it.
“Now Class upon reviewing your assignments, I see we have reached the point of showcasing talent,” Mr. Clement said. Every year this is the fissure causing assignment.” He perambulated up and down the rows, handing back graded papers, which looked like it was used to plug a bullet wound.
He extracted a fresh piece of chalk from a box, and crafted magic on the board Metaphor and Simile. “Now I don’t know how many of you plan on a fiction writing career. Judging by current trends all of you will try. Let me tell you, to save you from the disappointment, that will lead you to alcoholism. Hemingway was not strong at metaphor, or simile. In fact he, if I remember correctly. He paused and sat on his desk, staring up into the ceiling. “Similes are like defective ammunition, the lowest thing I can think of. Now I was always fond of the irony of that statement.” In his hand he held three papers:
“Jing felt guilty for stealing, like the feeling of guilt after jerking off.” The class guffawed. “I wouldn’t laugh the rest of you fared no better. “He bounced the ball, like an erect penis after ejaculating, as it goes down.” The smile was arrested at the border, as Mr. Clement took a sip from his zarf. “He begged with need, like a horny man at the foot of a model.” He placed the three by his side, and extracted a fourth.
He stood dead center of the room, giving a cursory look at everyone. I asked for one scene of beauty, and I got one scene from one person. “Feeling ennui, something had to happen. To keep up the appearance of masculinity, as he yawned, he affected a rub of the nape, his neck reclined over his fingers, like an exhausted jobler stealing a few minutes rest. In an instant, he descried a flock of sparrows darkening the sky, like Negro hands on an azure flagon. The eyes of the young private usurped a few seconds of thought from the interest heavy--bank of time.
Soldiers departed together united, over the river sticks into some sort of stygian nightmare; the arduous legwork of governmental disputes. In a war undeclared, they were more than on the front line, they were the front line; Pawns in a chess game where ones thoughts didn’t have to be recusant, but bear the mark of the individual. Individuality on the battlefield was dangerous, like an infinitesimal ember gracefully making contact with a puddle of flammable liquid. An inhalation of the cigarette, his only friend. Friendship another term that was mere trifle, unless the actants have been through throes together, and then the process can begin during the placid period. To his right through his contacts he saw a nameless soldier; it begot the realization--that all the men he could see lacked personal identification, like a naked suicide in a foreign land. The cuts on his hand delivered slight neuralgia through his arm. The sharpest pains go unnoticed until seen by accident, and no pain can be greater than with your own eyes, learning deaths verity and the pedagogue being someone dear to the heart. Lamentation is preempted by the survivalist instinct, but when a soldier is at peace, thoughts are free to roam, like feral equines on the Montana plains, that is when the one could feel the poignant loss. Lying back down on his corrugated pillow, the profane atheist closed his eyes, and thanked the almighty God, which he did not believe, existed.”
Mr. Clement held the paper over his head; he brought it down, as a doctor to the mother of a newborn. “Mr. Donovan, Alfred Chester would be proud. A few moans erupted, everyone looked away, Bart patted him on the back.
“Hey teach, I bet you didn’t know this guy reads Ulysses and Blood Meridian. I don’t get em’ its all a bunch of Bullsh… I mean. Well I don’t get em’.”
“Well Bartholomew, Genius isn’t perfected by studying dross.”
Bart shrugged. “Well he is smart, Kinna. Well to bad his Idol died”
Now sixty pairs of eyes looked towards Dallas, fueled by the humor of the death of Summers. A tint of vermillion formed on his cheeks. “Not funny man.”
At the behest of the bell, the spirits of all in the room seems to ease. Mr. Clement gestured with his head for Dallas to remain.

the bell has rung.
the bell rang.

even though its a rough draft, thanks for pointing it out, because i would have let that jejune mistake fly over my head

since you are thinking about this as an interior monologue--you mentioned that you wanted the instructor to go into one--why not revise the chapter as an interior monologue. i say this because the writing style appears to reflect the way that this instructor would seem to think. if the instructor has presented the material previously to the students, or if he is in the process of (i have no idea because i have not seen previous chapters), then a revision of this nature could be done.

the writing is sound--the language errors can be cleaned up and double check all your foreign phrases for errors...(Not going to nitpick through those.

as for flow..the flow is a bit flat. the course you mention in the text is Creative Writing 301 and it reads like a Creative Writing 301 story.

edit: writer asked about flow..wanted to cover that...

the story itself seems to have promise. You need to clean up some grammatical problems with pronouns and punctuation. The pronouns don't always point in the correct direction or match. I don't think the use of the genital language accomplishes your purpose either. Your character can be macho without being flippant. Otherwise, the vocabulary is also pretty advanced. Depending on your audience, perhaps it could be brought more into a solid line with better characterization of the players, because I don't see them as real people yet. And just why is this one paragraph such a thing of beauty to the old prof??? Sounds to me like the man is, well, really more of a Capote, Mailer, and Pynchon sort of fellow if he thinks that it represents genius???? The flow is just too heavy and without differentiation; it needs contrast, lightness, and balance between the spoken teaching (Clement) and the written angst of the story's author (Dallas?).

Please don't take offense, but its apparent that you are striving for a overly 'literary"- intellectual style. Is it really necessary to show off that you know the the word "stygian?" At the "behest of the bell?" "Actants" who have been through "throes?" Who in this earth these days says he "descried" a flock of sparrows?

Try to speak in your own voice. You have one, and your obvious love of language and desire to write tells me that you will probably develop a good one.

Again, please do not take this as insult or abuse, I am closer to you than you might think, I write for a living, though not as I had once hoped, as a writer of SERIOUS NOVELS and heir to Hemingway and Fitzgerald (the great American novel has been written, I never had that bug.) I write advocacy, in a legal and legislative context.

But really, seriously, there is nothing wrong with the big and fancy words, occasionally, in very carefully chosen contexts, but not all the time, not for no reason other than to demonstrate your mastery of the language.

Truly, seruiously, the most effective words I have ever written, the ones that produced explicit reaction from readers, have always been the simple, direct, plain spoken passages.

My two cents, add them to the others.

If you don't have a copy of it yet, pick up Browne and King's "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers". It's a must-have for your writing library.

so much cross description... slash, burn, edit.... there is something here I want to read, but it's buried deep within rampaging paragraphs of gratuitous shit.

To paraphrase M. Z. Bradley, "stop showing me how beautifully you write and tell me a goddamn story!"