UCI Program’s Writes of Passage : Education: While the two men who built up the highly acclaimed graduate program denounce the criticisms of a visiting novelist-teacher, they admit things are in a state of disarray.

When novelist Lynne Sharon Schwartz accepted an invitation to teach the graduate fiction-writing workshop at UC Irvine last winter, she envisioned an “appealing respite” from a bleak and hectic winter in New York City.

As it turned out, her 10-week stint was anything but the midwinter idyll she imagined.

In a particularly bitter postscript to an article she wrote in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Schwartz says she “found the writing program at Irvine in a state of disarray.”

But she didn’t stop there. She went on to say that the students in the fiction program are “demoralized, largely undistinguished, and unreceptive; the atmosphere in the English department was icy and corporate, and the criterion for literary success appeared to be having one’s novel optioned for the movies.”

Harsh words for UCI’s highly acclaimed graduate writing program, which many consider second only to the University of Iowa’s Master of Fine Arts Writing Program, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious graduate writing workshop.

This year alone, recent UCI graduates have published one collection of short stories (Michael Chabon’s “A Model World”) and three first novels: Varley O’Connor’s “Like China,” Lane von Herzen’s “Copper Crown” and Whitney Otto’s “How to Make an American Quilt,” which spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and is a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction.

While Oakley Hall and Donald Heiney are quick to denounce Schwartz’s potshots at the caliber of the writing students and the program’s criterion for literary success, the two men who built UCI’s graduate fiction writing program to its current level of prominence concede that there is some truth to Schwartz’s contention that the program is in a state of disarray.

“Well, it’s mildly true,” said Hall, who has been with the writing program since 1969. “There’s not anybody really in charge of the fiction writers right now.”

Hall officially retired in July, 1990, although he commuted from his home in Northern California, at the English department’s request, to teach the writing workshop last spring. Heiney, on the staff since 1965, left the program in March but did not have a hand in running it since the preceding school year.

Although a search to find a replacement for Hall was begun three years ago, it was not until this July that the university announced the appointment of prize-winning Australian novelist Thomas M. Keneally as distinguished professor of English and comparative literature. Keneally, who is being paid $110,000 to teach three courses a year to graduates and undergraduates, will conduct the fall fiction workshop.

But the author of “Schindler’s List” and more than 20 other novels, five plays and numerous film and television scripts is only half of the fiction program’s new guard. The English department is still searching for another author to fill the second teaching position--someone with a publishing track record who also has experience teaching in an MFA program. Until someone is found, Hall is scheduled to return for the winter quarter.

Although Keneally has made it clear from the start that he doesn’t want to be responsible for the day-to-day administrative details, he will, as “senior writer,” serve as head of the graduate fiction program, according to Mike Clark, chairman of the department of English and comparative literature.

One of Keneally’s biggest tasks will be reading the more than 200 applications that now come in each year for the six first-year openings in the two-year program.

Despite the changing of the guard, Clark doesn’t anticipate any major changes in the program.

“We’ve been so successful at this point I don’t think anyone wants to fiddle around with the format,” said Clark, who praises Heiney and Hall for taking “a program that literally didn’t exist and building up, in a space of two decades, one of the most important and productive programs in the country. It’s a remarkable achievement.”

It’s ironic, then, that the 26-year-old program would receive criticism just as Hall and Heiney are departing.

Clark said he was aware of Schwartz’s unhappiness but prefered not to respond to her criticisms other than to say, “There’s another side to that story.”

Reached by phone in New York City, Schwartz declined to elaborate.

“She certainly was not happy here,” said Heiney. “I put part of the blame with the way she was treated in the department and partly on her.”

As for the “icy and corporate” atmosphere in the English deparment, Heiney said, “the point is she’s correct. She had been there three weeks and never met anyone but the department secretary.”

While Schwartz was not happy with her stay at UCI, Heiney and Hall--neither of whom had seen the Poets & Writers Magazine article--say many of the writers in her workshop were unhappy with her.

From the start, they said Schwartz built resentment by telling students that they hadn’t learned enough yet to attempt writing novels and that they should be working on short stories instead. They said budding novelists were further alienated by Schwartz’s reluctance to read any material except those portions of their works-in-progress that were submitted for reading in the workshop. The normally casual camaraderie of the workshops quickly became, as Hall put it, “rather grim affairs.”

Both Heiney and Hall took particular exception to Schwartz’s comment that “the criterion for literary success appeared to be having one’s novel optioned for the movies.”

“I think that was really rotten,” said Hall. “I don’t think anybody thinks about getting a book made into a movie, but they would like to get their book published. They don’t worry about screen options. That’s sort of like lightning striking.”

In fact, of the nearly 150 students who have graduated from UCI’s graduate fiction program, only a handful have had their novels optioned for movies, including Chabon’s “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” Louis B. Jones’ “Ordinary Money” and Marti Leimbach’s “Dying Young.” (To date, however, Leimbach’s is the only novel to make it to the screen--as a starring vehicle for Julia Roberts.)

Although earlier UCI fiction program alums who have gone on to literary success include Richard Ford, Kem Nunn and Patricia Geary, it was Chabon’s 1988 coming-of-age first novel that was the first in a string of what Hall calls the “rather spectacular successes we’ve had.”

Sold for an impressive $155,000 while the 23-year-old Chabon was still in the program, the highly publicized novel focused national attention on the UCI writing program. Since then, the number of applicants has more than doubled, to 232 for this fall.

That number may grow even higher, say those involved with the program, by the addition of a celebrity writer of Keneally’s stature.

“His name on our brochures is very important,” said Hall, who remains bullish on the program’s future.

“The thing that ought to hold it together is the fact that because of past successes the quality of applications is very high,” he said. “If we exercise good judgment in the people we take, it should go on well.”