RESEARCH General Arts

WRITING
Despite bizarre goings-on, writers' colony spawned successful authors

Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

2/1/2002

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new book of previously unpublished writings details daily life at one of the weirdest creative writers' colonies ever to operate in the United States – or perhaps anywhere.

In the book, readers can sample the writings of some of the renegades who enlisted in Lowney Handy's dysfunctional little colony in rural Illinois in the mid-20th century. Against all odds, some of the men went on to successful careers in writing – including Handy’s first student, James Jones.

In "Writings From the Handy Colony" (Tales Press), one quickly discovers that Handy's philosophy of teaching gives a whole new meaning to the term "struggling writer." More a warden than a muse, and untrained in teaching and writing, Handy drove her disciples hard and controlled their every move. She forbade alcohol and rich food, and prescribed enemas for writer's block. Once a month she'd haul her students across the border to a Terre Haute, Ind., brothel. Above all else, Handy stripped writers of their egos before building them up again. In 1964, she wrote to colonist Jon Shirota, now a successful playwright: "The secret is to offer as little hope as possible, the writer has such an abundance that he will cheat himself, in the exuberant and self-praise of his own enthusiasm."

Two of the three editors of the new book were colony "insiders": Don Sackrider was Handy's second student and Helen Howe was her close friend. George Hendrick, the third editor, is an expert on Jones and an English professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.

As evidenced in the book, Handy's own writing was often incomprehensible, but she was a perceptive, albeit unorthodox, editor, Hendrick said. In addition, along with her tough love and bizarre copying exercises, she gave her students the confidence to believe in themselves as writers.

While the most fascinating contributions to the book may be Handy’s letters to her colonists, all of the works "carry the flavor of the 1950s," Hendrick said, "and show what one writer’s colony was doing." Over 20 years, the Handy Colony drew some 70 drifters, rebels and struggling writers.

Even before her intimate and professional liaison with Jones, Handy lived in a subterranean world, drawn to unfortunates and misfits of all stripes, "so it was consistent that she would take on Jones, who had gone AWOL and was very troubled at the time," Hendrick said.

Handy's father had been sheriff in Marshall, Ill., and his family lived in the jailhouse. There, Handy observed all kinds of down-and-outers. Later, she became "a perfect housewife," Hendrick said, who helped her husband climb the ranks at the oil refinery in nearby Robinson. Once her husband succeeded, she became the outcast, working with pregnant girls, troubled soldiers and then writers.

The way Handy saw it, "There is no more than a hair's breadth between the artist and the criminal," as she wrote Sackrider on March 15, 1950. But "the artist graduates out of the criminal class and looks into his heart and writes – or else he watches those around him with a cold clinical eye and writes about himself as he sees them. That is the way Jim writes. ..."