The Elegant Variation: THE JOURNALISM DEPARTMENT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS CLEARLY A DISASTER

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January 31, 2005

THE JOURNALISM DEPARTMENT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS CLEARLY A DISASTER

The UCI University Paper offers up this fawning, self-congratulatory look at their MFA program.

Don’t let its moniker of “research university” fool you; UCI is a hotbed of literary innovation, with an MFA program in creative writing that’s as competitive as any medical school.

According to Sara Robinson, a third-year student of the MFA’s fiction program, statistically speaking, “it’s more difficult to get into the MFA program at UC Irvine than it is to get into Harvard Law School … because [the MFA program] takes such a small number of people.”

Not small enough, we fear.

Posted at 12:07 AM | Permalink

Comments

Very true, no doubt, Mark, but I'll say this: Sara Robinson is one writer who didn't need to go to UCI in the first place. I read her work three years ago and she was already top-notch.

Posted by: Tod Goldberg | January 31, 2005 at 12:24 PM

You want fawning? Don't look to Sara Robinson, myself, Geoffrey Wolff or anything else having to do with the UCI program itself. The UCI program doesn't even advertise itself nationally. If you want craven self-promotion, I suggest you drive to Iowa City. And really, take a potshot at Sara Robinson? Shame on you, buddy. You're barking up the wrong tree.

Posted by: Zithereen | July 12, 2005 at 12:24 PM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

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Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

January 31, 2005

THE JOURNALISM DEPARTMENT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS CLEARLY A DISASTER

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

January 31, 2005

THE JOURNALISM DEPARTMENT, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS CLEARLY A DISASTER

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism