May 18, 2001

A Portrait of the Artist as Apprentice

By JAY PARINI

Writers learn their craft, and take the measure of their profession, in different ways, yet few have gotten very far without the help of someone -- usually an older writer. Hemingway, Faulkner, and many others traveled to New Orleans in their youth to sit at the feet of Sherwood Anderson. Samuel Beckett attached himself to James Joyce. Robert Lowell dropped out of Harvard and made his way to Gambier, Ohio, where he pitched a tent on the lawn of John Crowe Ransom, whose mentoring had already