Write free and get locked up

AH, THE HIGH school English class! Who can forget the excruciating silence during discussions of “Ethan Frome,” the inevitability of “A Separate Peace,” the endless snickering over Dickens’ use of the word “ejaculate”? (“ ‘Where?’ ejaculated Mr. Pickwick.”)

Better yet, who doesn’t recall fondly the creative writing assignments that teachers resorted to when no one had done the reading?

Peppered liberally with inaccurate quotations from pop artists, these pieces are known for their references to sexual acts only partly understood by the author, their total grammatical meltdown and, at least when I was in high school, their uncanny -- sometimes verbatim -- resemblance to books like Judy Blume’s “Wifey” (the primary goal being maximum teacher embarrassment).

Delightful as these works often are, it seems that not everyone is beguiled by student literary offerings. Especially not law enforcement in Cary, Ill., the Chicago suburb where Allen Lee, a senior at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested April 24 after turning in an improvisational essay containing allusions to mass shootings, sex with dead bodies and a warning to the teacher: “Don’t be surprised on inspiring the first CG school shooting.” There also was some commentary about Rice Krispies treats.

Had this charming little screed not materialized so soon after the Virginia Tech massacre, school authorities would have presumably chalked it up to standard-issue adolescent male nonsense and, at most, sent Lee to the guidance counselor to talk about anger management. But instead, they turned it over to the cops, and he was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, separated from the general student population and now faces a possible 30-day jail sentence and a $1,500 fine.

Despite his rhetorical proclivities, it didn’t take long to realize that Lee was no Seung-hui Cho or Columbine shooter. A wrestling team member with a 4.2 grade point average, Lee appears to be ambitious and well liked and was set to join the Marines after graduation, though now that he’s facing criminal charges, his enlistment offer has reportedly been rescinded.

So what was the source of Lee’s “American Psycho” prose? Consider the instructions for the “free writing” assignment that spawned it. Students got orders that included “write nonstop for a set period of time,” “do not make connections as you write,” “write whatever comes into your mind” and “do not judge or censor what you are writing.”

It’s easy to assume that this technique, which is designed to help pry its practitioners from the grip of writer’s block, would offer no end of clues about someone’s psyche, as if it were a literary manifestation of dreaming or even Freudian analysis. But as it turned out, Lee was not revealing his interior life as much as he was reflecting and mimicking the pop cultural detritus of the world around him.

After his arrest, Lee wrote an “author’s note” that was passed around Cary-Grove High and then published by the local media. He explained that the first line of the essay, “Blood sex and booze,” was a reference to a Green Day song, and there were also references to the movie “Men in Black” and the Super Mario Brothers and DotA video games. He mixed in his feelings about the shortcomings of the democratic process and his perception that the teacher was artificially trying to win her students’ affections by bringing them snacks.

The crucial sentence of the essay, which Lee put in quotation marks, was this: “ ‘So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone ... then had sex with the dead bodies. Will [sic] not really, but it would be funny if I did.’ ”

Here’s Lee’s explanation: “The statement in quotes is done so as a non-personal statement as I would have done in reference to a character for a story. The reference to the gun P90 is from a video game, combined with a reference to necrophilia as a comment regarding a seriously messed up situation.”

OK, it isn’t exactly an Oprah’s Book Club reading guide, but, if you ask me, we can learn a whole lot more from it than we can from most author statements. That’s because, in these information-overloaded times, Lee has performed a desperately needed service.

He’s made it clear that there is a difference between original, meaningful ideas -- the kind that require rational thought and maybe even several rounds of rewriting and editing to get right -- and the lists of names and barely explained cultural references that, thanks to hyperlinks and short attention spans, now pass for reporting or expository prose in many venues.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, turn on CNN and try to keep up with the IDs on the crawl. Visit a blog or two, and be sure to read the reader comments. If you feel a bit like you’re immersed in a “free writing” exercise, complete with the occasional revenge fantasy, you’re probably not alone.

Seung-hui Cho proves that schools can’t assume that all violent student writing has quotes around it. Allen Lee proves that even if you’re engaged in “free writing,” there may be some value in “judging or censoring” what you put down on paper and turn in. It’s called thinking.

mdaum@latimescolumnists.com