in defense of mfa programs (which are sometimes run by old white men)
i’ve been debating with myself for the last hour whether to post anything regarding anis shivani’s latest slam against the nation’s mfa programs on the huffington post. i kinda feel like the kid who sits on the escalator and just doesn’t ever learn his lesson. i’m tired of getting baited & linking to that guy’s shitty posts, so i’m not going to this time. you can google it, or look him up on huffpo, or maybe if you go to houston, you’ll find him screaming about the death of The Great American Writer on a street corner.
after several slideshow-type articles, shivani has now written a nearly 5,000 word screed entitled “is the mfa system corrupt and undemocratic?” after i complained about his reluctance to write a proper article, i tried to read this. i swear i really did. but it was every bit the lit crit thesis kind of piece that the title suggests. and it was boring.* from what i did read, his point seems to be that mfa programs have become the modern day equivalent of medieval guild systems, and that this master-apprentice model is stifling creativity. i’m here to call bullshit on that.
i don’t know if shivani has ever been in an mfa program—his bio on huffpo certainly doesn’t mention one. if he has, i would think it would lend credibility to his criticism, having been on the inside. i’ve only ever been in one mfa program—the one i’m in now at eastern washington—but i did research dozens upon dozens of programs in the application process. and given the heterogeneity i found, it’s hard to believe that mfa programs would be collectively responsible for whatever shivani perceives as lacking in contemporary fiction (that i believe there is a tremendous & diverse amount of good writing out there now is probably a whole other post).
shivani bemoans the institutionalizing of certain rules/standards/techniques (e.g., that mfa’ers are taught “show, don’t tell” & “write what you know” & “kill your darlings” & other such platitudes). which, i suppose, there is an ounce of truth to. but at literally every turn in my mfa experience, professors have followed up any such “rule” with the encouragement to move beyond that. “do whatever you can get away with” is the only true mantra. which kind of reminds me of all the time i spent in grade school and high school learning grammar, minding the amount of “to be” verbs vs. “action” verbs, and making sure to never start sentences with conjunctions or end them with prepositions. you learn the rules precisely so you can break them, and break them in interesting ways.
i kinda crapped out on shivani’s essay when he started digressing into the socio-economic forces behind the growth in mfa programs and the number of writers who now support themselves by teaching other writers. that’s maybe interesting, i guess. i suspect that trend is being pushed (at least in part) today by the print vs. digital/internet upheaval, while writers struggle to find a way to get paid for their work. but that same realignment of the concept of publishing is allowing a greater number of young writers to get their stuff out into the world, and many of those writers are products of the mfa system (and many of them are not). there are writers with and without the mfa credentials doing lots of interesting work. with the internet being a great equalizer, i’m not sure how shivani can defend his assertion that mfa programs are crushing “freelance competition” (he really leans on that guild analogy). maybe my belief in the strength of contemporary american literature isn’t a separate post after all.
the refrain i’ve heard within my own mfa program, and outside of it (from mfa-holders and writers without mfas) is that a program basically buys you time. time which you purchase either through loans or through a teaching assistantship. yes, you go through workshops, and have theory classes, and all the rest, but you can internalize or ignore the lot of it as you see fit. the biggest benefit of the program is giving writers a chance to devote themselves to their art and see if they can make a go of it. and in truth, many don’t. that’s a side of mfa programs shivani probably doesn’t address (i didn’t finish his essay, remember). there are more than just a few isolated cases of writers going through the wringer of an mfa program and realizing that maybe they don’t have the talent, or, more likely, the will, to keep writing. but even that has an upside, as it creates really discerning readers in shivani’s “marketplace.”
in any case, i think i’m done with shivani. i’ve got some real writing to do. writing that has nothing to do with an “mfa house style” or “major new york publishing houses” or “residences/conferences” or “awards/fellowships/grant committees.” you know, the things that shivani seem way more hung up on than any mfa’er i know.
and, yes, okay, fine. in the interest of democracy, here’s the link to his stupid article.
*i feel compelled to note that many mfa programs, including ewu’s, tend to shy away from lit crit. that’s what ma programs are for.
Tags: Anis Shivani, MFA programs
[...] I found it difficult to take the writing seriously because it was so over the top. I love this response from Jason at The Barking. It’s something too. Who pissed in the Wheaties of everyone who [...]
protip: asteriks work better immediately after the paragraph than at the end of the article.
Disproportionate control over the distribution of rewards and honors is an interesting topic, but I’d want to hear about specific outsiders. His article reads as bitter and implies some grand organization which obviously doesn’t exist. Maybe the uniformity of product is a lack of imagination. To me, the writer as stand-up comedian speaks more to a general pessimism or apathy among artists than the byproduct of trying to perpetuate some myth. A better article would have traded the conspiracy theories for a discussion of “master” writers who don’t fit the MFA aesthetic, for the perusal of both apprentices and freelancers.
Funny title… Yeah, only sometimes.
Anis Shivani’s three rules to a successful article: The first sentence must include AT LEAST 5 adjectives or adverbs of three or more syllables; the first paragraph must include some iteration of “oligarchy;” and the author of the article must spend at least an hour with a thesaurus during the creation of the article.
Haha – yeah, his adjective/adverb count kinda killed my soul. Oligarchy is pretty much my least favorite word ever, alongside hegemony. Why do words that pertain to power structures have to be so irritating?
This article is just bitter. It seems like somebody’s still pissed that they didn’t get into an MFA program. It must be a slow news week. The elections can only grind their filthy boot heel into our eyes for so long until public apathy sets in and Mr. Shivani gets to do an opinion/puff piece. It’s kinda funny how we’re workshopping this article. If MFA’s are like medieval guilds, then I want to be a 13th level thief with a +2 vorpal dagger and an 82% hide in shadows.