How would you describe the MFA aesthetic? Jason responded to Anis Shivani’s new page-view-hungry article, and it got me thinking about this MFA aesthetic we often bemoan—I’m not sure I could define it. I know when I see it. How would you define it, in poetry or fiction? Read more »

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.

Read more »

will this guy never stop with the lists?  the man responsible for the much talked-about/crapped-upon list of overrated writers has just released another slideshow—this one of the 17 most innovative university presses & the books you need from them.  which, of course, follows up the 17 lit mags that *might* survive the internet, and the 15 feisty small presses (& the books you’ll need from them, too).  makes me wish i got paid by the bullet point, too.

fiction sucks!  we’re not kidding.  no, really—it seriously does!  in response to which the fiction writers of the world all curled up under blankets at home and sucked their sucky little thumbs until they all died.  wait… that didn’t happen at all.  everybody still loves to not only read novels & short stories, they love them so much that they dedicate undue amounts of time to pissing&moaning online about who’s better, who’s best.

in case you missed it, some writer that you’ve probably never heard of put together a list of other american writers he felt didn’t deserve the critical attention/praise/fame/money/sex/whatever they were getting that he wasn’t.  and then he (annoyingly) put them in a slideshow on huffpo instead of, you know, actually writing a regular article about it.  and that, naturally, kicked up a real shitstorm.

jezebel whacks at the list for taking down women writers (among other things), publishers weekly & the guardian blogs both turnaround and make underrated lists, and every bookworm on the interwebs has had to weigh in themselves (including, apparently, this one).  so do your patriotic duty and go drop a comment somewheres.