THE GROVES OF ACADEME

David Leavitt partakes in a lengthy, candid interview about the "dire state of fiction" at Court the Jesters.

In all honesty, even though I teach in an MFA program, I have mixed feeling about the MFA industry (and it is becoming something of an industry). Here at UF, for instance, the quantity of applications that we receive increases substantially each year. This year we only accepted 6% of our applicants in fiction. More and more people seem to be writing.

Yet we're told that fiction is on the skids, is tanking, that no one buys novels or story collections any more. There's a paradox here, and a problem that reveals itself when you actually read these stories by people who don't bother to read fiction themselves. At the very least the MFA programs preserve the idea that writing is a craft and that established writers should train younger writers as established musicians train younger musicians and that writers should read great literature in order to learn from it.

If a lot of writers (like me) have ended up in academia, it's not because we're necessarily drawn characterologically to the groves of academe; it's because academia offers writers a degree of stability that's impossible to find elsewhere -- a steady salary, a pension plan, health insurance -- while leaving us time to write. Especially as you get older, these things become more important. On the other hand, writers who teach in MFA programs often find themselves caught up -- unwittingly, it seems -- in academic politics and administration, and these demanding facets of the job can take up so much time that the writers have very little time left to write.

Comments

[BradyDale]

And then there's all of us who take the position that academia has made writing way too precious. I sort of liked what David Mamet said about his own lifestyle and the writers he grew up admiring. It feels like now, though, the MFA programs are an almost essential part of the credentializing process to break through anymore.

P.S. MFAs are definitely an industry.

[jillian]

It's true and I'm happy to see even an MFA head admit it. The point is, commercial short fiction has become extinct, Leavitt can only mention three markets because that's all there is for freelancers. So now the short story has gone off into academe -- sounds like a dead form to me. I don't want it to be that way, but what can we do? The lack of quality writing and fiction is the reason I gave up on commercial magazines. Even the so-called timeless and upscale brands are just glorified catalogs now.

[Lisa Romeo]

I've never heard of any editor, of any type of publication or publishing house, or any agent, ever decline a really well-written work because the writer did not have an MFA. I don't buy that an MFA is an "essential part of the credentializing process," as the poster of the first comment believes.

The "credentializing process" -- if that even exists -- should consist of doing whatever a writer can to develop their writing skills and muscle, and to raise the level of their craft, as well as accumulating experience. For some people, that means an MFA program. For others, it takes other forms - workshops, classes at writing centers or college continuing ed, a writing coach, conferences, etc. For everyone, that should include experience in some facet of the literary or media world, working with words and ideas, whether that is in publishing or academe, beyond their own writing. I think this is true for any writer, fiction or nonfiction.

I do agree that the MFA "industry" is getting dangerously close to turning out too many graduates whose job prospects are limited to teaching, eventually landing in other MFA programs. Although craft is the core of an MFA program, some attention must be paid to practical matters, and course material developed that addreses what the graduate will do "after the MFA."

[Margaret M.]

Lisa, you've never heard of it because they aren't going to come right out and admit it. But if you need proof, you just have to keep your eyes open and look. I see it in my program, yes: academia is its own culture, and the English departments are not an exception to that. The professional work world of writing is a world away from us.

Here, try this experiment. Every time you get a journal, read the contributor's notes. More and more you won't see any professional or freelance writers at all, just teachers or students or MFA grads. Some blogger did a study of this with one of the more respected journals, I think it was Five Points, where he went through and googled every contributor in the last five or so years worth of issues, and didn't find a single contributor who was not an MFA grad, professor, or otherwise connected with academia.

There have been some other sharp comments on this debate posted recently in the articles "In Defense of Academe" and "Pseudo-literary ficto-tainment." The comments here are intriguing, especially the ones from academia. It makes sense that academia will promote itself; isn't it suicidal not to? But the end result discriminates against anyone who isn't so "credentialed" to write, and inasmuch as it restricts access to ideas and writers, and even entire schools of writing, it isn't good for readers (or the culture at large), either.

[Margaret M.]

Lisa, no sooner had I posted than I found another example for you.

In the "pseudo-entertainment" article above, note the first comment. Here the author is discussing this very topic and includes a link to Poetry magazine to show his example. This is the magazine published by the Poetry Foundation and is the most distinguished poetry journal in the country. And apparently all they ever publish are the properly "credentialed" poets of academia.

But I still recall a larger example having to do with a literary journal, and if I find the link I'll post it here.

[M. Allen Cunningham]

[…] I suffer an involuntary wariness of academe where it professes to nourish and sustain literary art through drills in technique, the doctrinal enshrinement of certain great texts, or consensus opinions in workshops — pedagogical approaches that risk breeding what Frank Lloyd Wright called the incubus of habit that besets the mind. Wallace Stegner (a creative writing teacher himself) was outspoken regarding the kind of learning universities ought to foster:

“What we most need is neither generalists nor specialists, but specialists who can generalize and generalists with a specialty... Try self-consciously to produce specialists and leaders in [a] pre-professional college, and you will, I am convinced, produce half-men, limited men, men with imperfect vision and low horizons.”

We know our universities are fast becoming the last bastions of learned literary appreciation in this country, as good review publications dwindle to ever smaller numbers and independent bookstores fold in the shadows of conglomerates. In the absence of any substantial system of literary patronage, universities are among the last incubators, even, of new literature; while BookScan figures bar the development of healthy young novelistic careers, witness how many of our nation’s wonderful literary journals are produced under the auspices of institutions. And given this state of affairs, this cocooning-away of literature, further separating the art of fiction from “the total discourse” [of the sciences and humanities] and moving it toward classification as a discreet (even arcane) discipline, we must ask ourselves how many unexamined critical biases are incidentally produced? Do MFA programs, given their dynamic of a collective criticism, unwittingly (I emphasize unwittingly) propagate such biases?

E.L. Doctorow (who has taught at NYU) writes: “[The] gift of the [novelist’s] practice seems to come of its inherently solitary nature. A writer has no credential except as it is self-awarded. Despite our university graduate programs in writing there is nothing that licenses a writer to write, no equivalent of a medical degree, or a law degree or a Ph.D. in molecular biology or divinity. Writers are on their own. They are specialists in nothing. They are liberated.” […]

[laura]

margaret, you have to deconstruct what these critics are attempting to say. as it turns out, nay-sayers of the mfa program model (and eventually of the literary journals themselves) are usually those rejected writers whose own talents and abilities are questionable at best, and who are merely attempting to lend credence to the sour grapes they have with a system they are unable to excel at. there is a reason these programs exist in the first place (to study and promote a craft), and the complaint of being "excluded" or of some inability to partake in said craft because they are unwilling to join in the very study of the craft, is the reductio ad absurdium that is sounds like!

[LM]

Margaret M.:

Your post rests on the assumption that there are as many good writers with no connection to academea or that at least there are a significant amount submitting to slush piles.

There are not.

I'm sorry, but that is the truth.

The fact is, most good writers who are willing to submit to small magazines are, in this day and age, likely to persue an MFA. And if not, if they are one of the few great writers who didn't go to an MFA they are likely to take a job teaching at some point.

I've read slush and worked as an editor for several magazines. I can promise that no one ever was rejected because they didn't have an MFA nor was anyone accepted because they did have one. The quality of the work is really all the matters. The only bias that may exist is for previously published authors (I think a lot of readers assume "if this person was good enough for McSweeney's and the Paris Review, they are good enough for our crappy magazine.")

Reading slush for a magazine is a real eye opener. Most writers who submit material are simply horrible. This includes those with an MFA degree. Most of their submissions are completely mediocre. But most non-MFA students submissions are barely literate.

As Leavitt says, a good number of people who submit to MFAs seem like they don't even read fiction themselves. 95% of slush submitters seem that way.

If you want to complain that it is bad that we have an enviornment where most good writers feel they need an MFA, okay. But just because most published writers are connected to universities in some capacity means that the literary magazines are actively trying to shut out non-mfa writers or actively promote any random writer with an MFA. I can promise you this is not the case.

[Dan Wickett]

I've not done any statistical study, and can only offer data from my own publishing company, Dzanc Books.

Looking through the books we've published, or will be:

Roy Kesey - no MFA
Yannick Murphy - I'm not sure, I know she took classes with Gordon Lish, but don't know if she has the paper
Peter Markus - no MFA to my knowledge
Hesh Kestin - no MFA
Kyle Minor - yes, from Ohio State
Mike Czyzniejewski - yes, from BGSU
Peter Selgin - I'm not sure, though he does teach in an MFA program
Suzanne Burns - Not that I know of

So, it's not absolutely necessary. At least not to be published by Dzanc Books.

Nor do I, nor Steven Gillis, the co-founder of Dzanc, have MFA's. I used to look at a lot of car parts though, which obviously is the path leading to publishing.

[LM]

Another thing to say for Margaret:

I am an MFA student and have been published in several magazines. For the purpose of your studies I would count as someone who is unfairly being accepted because of my connections, or something.

The problem with that?

I don't ever put that I'm an MFA student in my cover letters. None of the editors that accept my work know I'm in an MFA.

I do this becuase I actually believe the opposite, that MFA students are quite often looked DOWN UPON in the literary world. There is a deep and IMHO irrational bias against them. So I never list my MFA affiliation in my submissions.

I'm sure I'm not the only one either.

[LM]

E.L. Doctorow (who has taught at NYU) writes: “[The] gift of the [novelist’s] practice seems to come of its inherently solitary nature. A writer has no credential except as it is self-awarded. Despite our university graduate programs in writing there is nothing that licenses a writer to write, no equivalent of a medical degree, or a law degree or a Ph.D. in molecular biology or divinity. Writers are on their own. They are specialists in nothing. They are liberated.” […]

Meh. This is the typical case of someone applying a romantic idea that may work for a few people to all people.

Some writers are solitary, but writing is not as purely solitary as many people pretend. Plenty of great work has occured from collaborations with editors (Raymond Carver? T.S. Eliot?). Plenty of great writers flourished in literary communities (the beats? Oulipo? etc.)

most writers I know have friends who they share their work with. And most writers I know work better in literary communities than by themselves. Not all, but most.

MFAs, at the very least, do provide a literary community for someone to dwell in for a short time as well as a group of other serious writers to make connections with.

[grackyfrogg]

i am also an mfa student, and i also read through the slush pile of a literary magazine. my decision to pursue the mfa was due to my desire to focus more intently on my writing and learn how to improve my process, and the mfa certainly has helped me do both of those things. and sure, i could have just taken courses through a university extension or something (i have done that in the past), but i figured, hey, if i'm going to shell out the dough, may as well get the degree... and that may be helpful down the line if i decide i want to teach. or not. who knows.

kind of like lots of degrees/career paths in life, there are no guarantees that the payoff will be worth it. but i suppose that depends largely on what you want the payoff to be, doesn't it?

in terms of reading for the lit mag, i ignore the cover letters until after i've read the story, because i want to avoid any bias that may come from seeing where the author has published, etc. and even after i've read the story, i don't always read the cover letter, because at that point it doesn't really matter. i'm not going to suddenly like a story i hated because the author has been published in a great magazine previously or won awards; similarly, i'm not going to turn around and reject a story i liked because it turns out a person has no MFA and no publishing credentials. so that's my process, for what it's worth.

[Charles]

Every time you get a journal, read the contributor's notes. More and more you won't see any professional or freelance writers at all, just teachers or students or MFA grads.

Outside of the big journals, who only publish famous people anyway, most literary magazines do not actual pay any money. Or at least not enough to make a living as a "freelance" writer. Maybe that is why no professional or freelance writers publish in them?

[EG]

Can fiction stop being a 'craft' and go back to being an art? I don't want to admire a story like a admire a cool looking, well made chair.

Ready Steady Book pointed out how 'literary fiction' is becoming a genre with formulas and conventions. I think MFA programs have a lot to do with it. RSB wants a return to Literature (that's right, capital L). I don't know if the MFA system is going to get us there.

Why is the MFA a purely american problem. Other countries don't seem to need to this sort of professionalization of writing. Grad creative writing programs have only recently emerged in the UK and play a very minor role so far. i haven't heard of anything like this in France or Germany. I am not sure about Asia or South America. In reading reviews of contemporary literature from German and France, I find a lot more adventurous material than I do in the US. Material that would likely never get published on the level they are in their native countries. Can you imagine Pascal Quignard's Les Ombres errantes being published by a major US house, much less winning a national book award? Can you imagine that work coming from an MFA and being workshopped?

Are MFA's good for American publishers? Sure, credentials make their job easier. Are MFA's good for American literature? Not in my opinion.

[Dan Wickett]

Seriously? Having an author with the "credential" of an MFA makes my job as a publisher easier?

How? I'm obviously not taking advantage of something I should be with the few authors we have coming up that do have MFA's.

Okay, here's one area I can think of that their MFA's will help out a bit. Setting up readings. They'll have contacts from their university setting that might help me out a bit. That said, we didn't have much trouble setting Kesey up for a dozen cities over a two week time period - reading series, bookstores, college campuses. So, I could be wrong about this as well.

But reviews? Getting stores to stock them? The real big aspect, sales? I just don't see what I'm missing as to how to utilize this credential.

[LM]

EG:

In France philosophers are rock stars. It is just a more high brow culture. There is just as much experimental work published in America (hell, in fact I've read numerous essays on obscure American writers written in France), but it just isn't nearly as popular as in France.

On the flip side, you mention the UK. I'd argue that mainstream literary american fiction is far more adventurous than british fiction. American literature has been more adventurous than british fiction for a long time and french fiction has been more adventurous than either for centuries.

I don't think MFAs have anything to do with any of this.

Can you imagine that work coming from an MFA and being workshopped?

Um, yes. Totally.

I'm sorry, but MFA programs aren't all full of Raymond Carver imitators. To name some MFA graduates off the top of my head: Ben Marcus, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson.... I think there are plenty of adventurous, weird and rule-breaking american writers coming out of MFA programs.

[alex]

Not only dire, but everything today is about pleasing the lowest common denominator. The situation is bad. And what irks me most about it? Just how the establishment won't even admit there's even a problem (cf your typical Mediabistro editorial or Writers Market article, insisting that everything is fine in the world of fiction).

[Steven Augustine]

I love how the lingo-parroting*, stumblingly-cadenced comments from the MFAdvocates all very helpfully provide the ammunition for their own most damning rebuttals. If these are the aspirants and their gatekeepers, is it any wonder that 99% of even published material is irremediable termite poop?

No one can teach you to write, but you can be taught, in time, to pursue likelier outlets. Think of how happy your parents will be!

*What would Charlie Kaufman say? "Don't say 'craft'."

[Charles]

The irony in the last post is almost too much to take.

Is it some official self-pwning Friday I am unaware of?

Thanks for the laugh though.

[Matt Pearce]

Steven could probably use an MFA in manners.

[Matt Pearce]

Then again, maybe people skills can't be taught.

[Steven Augustine]

"The irony in the last post is almost too much to take."

I'm quite sure that failing to grasp it renders the irony bearable for you, chum. What did Freddy say...? That which does not kill you reconciles you to a service sector job with an affordable health plan?

"Steven could probably use an MFA in manners."

Thanks, but I'll stick with the rude satisfaction of truth-telling.

[Dino]

I guess writing a poorly written, tin-eared post using cliche lines like "no one can teach you to write" proves something... but probably not what the author intended.

[Steven Augustine]

Dino: consider me lacerated. I've read your cannily experimental fiction, your dogma-inverting critiques, your deftly ironic socio-political think-pieces and so, so much of your marvelous long-form narrative verse. Obviously, I defer to your judgment in all things literary.

Thanks, man. You've opened my eyes. Bring on the lukewarm pre-chewed McStarbucked pap... I mean... more sparkling MFA wonderments, please!

[maitresse]

perhaps this is snobbery, but I'm not sure I'd classify MFA programs as "academe," even if they are housed in universities, nor would I consider its graduates or teachers "academics."