Chekhov's Mistress
An Outsider’s thoughts on Dan Green’s “Not Merely Academic”
MFA Programs
Last midnight I read Dan Green’s piece on the friction between creative writing programs and their academically distant cousins in the English department. I think it is an excellent essay and it has brought to surface some of my thoughts on the subject – informed from the viewpoint of an outside observer as opposed to Green’s enviable academic background.
In my own meager way, I’ve been trying to develop a curriculum here at Otto Didact University that would develop my creative writing skills in a way that is grounded in the rich history of literature – a course that has and will include reading/studying the great poets and writers from Dante and Milton to Joyce and Nabokov, a broad take on literary theory from Plato to Derrida, developing language skills, and of course avidly writing every day.
Having wended my way through enough academia to earn a master’s degree (in economics), I have at least some sense of what I am gaining and what I am missing by doing this on my own. This path doesn’t entirely replace university study, but it has its advantages too, whereas at a minimum it combines a bit of two related but separate disciplines, albeit both in a somewhat watered down fashion from what they would be in a formal setting.
Somewhat aside from Green’s argument, there exists a debate on the efficacy of writing programs as to whether or not they turn out over-workshopped droning writers or raise the standard of writing (or perhaps just provide a way for otherwise impoverished writers to make a living teaching). Despite a strong desire on my part to commune with other writers and have a critical eye turned on my work, I don’t know if I will ever enroll in a MFA program. In part this is because of my impression built upon comments like Brian Lennon’s in a recent BookForum essay where he says he was “pretty well disgusted with the fundamental lack of interest in reading demonstrated by many of [his] fellow [MFA] degree candidates.” This may sound high-minded or over generalized, but it is not the only commentary to this effect I’ve seen either.
It is also my impression that a major reason writers enroll in an MFA program is to make contacts. In fact, at a recent Media-Bistro seminar on getting a literary agent, I noticed that most of the published authors trooped out as success stories met their agent directly or indirectly through contacts made in an MFA program, effectively sending the message that if you want to get published (in contrast to just writing), the MFA road is your EasyPass and all others are just one big traffic jam.
But some of these programs are very expensive. It seems to be quite unpoetic to spend $30,000 or more to improve your writing, and I’m afraid that burden puts an emphasis on getting published to earn back those onerous expenses. Perhaps that is the crux of the problem. Those working toward a P.H.D. in English or a related degree are probably counting on a teaching career afterwards; the MFA candidate has an uncertain future, for publishing is fickle and quality writing does not necessarily equate to a fruitful career.
Green says that “creative writing programs need increasingly to be fashioned not merely as literature’s branch of applied knowledge but as the very center of debate about, inquiry into, and, yes, instruction in literature itself.” I wholeheartedly agree, but it would seem to this outsider that such arguments are indeed academic because external factors emphatically influence the content and quality of MFA programs, ultimately making them still a different breed than their scholarly counterparts who are firmly ensconsed in ivory.
p.s. Please be clear that my comments above are not so much a criticism of Green’s article, but a tangent provoked by the essay reflecting my own thoughts and concerns.
Green’s article: RE:Arts and Letters.
Read widely, think well, and write often.
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: August 12, 2004
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
