MFA vs NYC Chad Harbach In his 2009 book The Program Era: Postwar Fiction andthe Rise of Creative ‘ring, Mark MeGusl describes how Amerean ition has boeome inseparsble ‘om is institutional context—the universiy—as particulary embodied inthe ‘writing workshop, The book is remarkable in many respects, not last for “MeGur's suggestive readings of a host of major American writers. In terms of the intellectual history ofthe writing workshop, The Program Pa marks a tum- ing point after which the MFA program comes to scem somehow diferent than it di previously. I fel, reading MeGu, a i the MFA beast has a last been ‘offered a lok inthe mior, and may finally come to know itself wits. ‘This may seem paradoxical, or backward: writing programs, ae all, have long existed as an object of sci study for the people who actually attend oF teach in them, usually in the form of stie—David Foster Wallace’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way Francine Prose's ue Angel, that movie with the Belle & Sebastian soundinck, and on and on. But (o borrow one of ‘MeGur's many ideas) the program writer, even if he's been both student snd professor, alway wants to acure, andi to some extent granted, outsider status by the university b's always lobbing his flaming bags of prose over the vied ‘gate late at night. Then inthe moming he pus ona tie and walks though the gate and goes to his office. Inthe unveesity, the ftion weiter nevertheless man- ages nolo think ofhimscf as of the sniversity,‘McGurl interrupts this unseliconsciousnes by filing a fll and oficial report from across te hallway: from the English Department proper forcing the aspir- ing novelist 1o look across that hallway and notice a bunch of graduate students and professors siting there, in identical offices, wielding identical rd pens. You're lke me no! is one ofthe cheerful subtexts of The Program Era—a iter ary cio’ pointing out thatthe creative writer is jut a institutionally entangled 18 the critic has long been acknowledged tobe. Or, more charitably put (or ‘MeGur is perpetually charitable), thatthe fiction writer, a last, can cca fet- ting bout how fice and wid he sand gett work. ‘But what kind of work? One good outtome of MeGul’s analysis would be to lay to est the perpetual hand-wringing about what MFA programs do to writes (@g., turn them into cringing, cautious, post-Carverite automatons), Because of the universitiation of Antricen fiction that MoGurl describes, its vieually Jmpossible to read a particular book and deduce whether the writer attended a program. For one thing, se almost certainly di, For another, he workshop asa form has bled downward into the college, so that & writer could exsily have taken lifetime's worth of workshops as an undergraduate, 2 Ta Jonathan Seftan For, And even ifthe writer has somehow never heard of an MEA program ot st foot ona college campus, it doesn't matter, because if he's read any Ameri ‘an ition ofthe past sixty yeas, of met someone who did, she's imbibed the general ides and asthetc. We ae all MEAs now ‘On the flip side (os McGurl can't quite know, because be attended tea!” ‘gad schoo!), MFA programs themselves ae so lax and Iaiser fair as to have a shockingly small impact on students’ work especially shocking if you're the stdent and paying $89,000 forthe privilege. Sted by writer profesor prove: pied with their ovm work oftheir failure to prodace any, feed from pedagog- cal urgency by the tenuousness of the link between fiction writing and ‘employment, and populated by ever younger, often immediately postoleyiatestudents, MPA programs today serve les as hotbed of fierce syste incu tion, oF fnshing schools for almost-teady writes (inthe way of, ay, Towa in ze é ‘Two years spent in an MFA program, in otber words, constitute a tiny and ‘often ineMetai part of he American writer’ lifelong engagernent withthe uni- degree of aesthetic freedom, Get on ofthe schools and live! they urge, forge ting onthe one hand how much of contemporary lift is ive inthe shadow of the university, even if beyond its walls; nd on the ether hand how much fee living an adult can do while stendng two classes per week. TUTTE ‘There were 79 degree granting programs in creative writing in 1975; today, there are 1,269! This explosion has crested a huge source of financial support for working writers, not jus inthe form of lecture Fees, adjunetship, and tem- porary appointments—though these abound—but hones to-goodness jobs: decently pid, relatively secure compared with other industries, and often even ‘ipetion Wd, This sitution—of two complementary economic syst of roughly matched strength—is anew ove for American fiction, As the mass ead>Evenone knows this, BW emake aly al ie Wy AE tcanuile, may well publish her books ata New York house. Thre ate even MFA programs in New York, lots of them, though these generally partake ‘ofthe NYC culture, And many writer move back and forth between the MFA. and NYC worlds, whether over the course of a career or within a single your A ‘writer like Deborah Eisenberg, who spends half the year in New York and alfathe University of Vina; whose early stories were published to acclaim in The "New Yorker but who subsequently became known (or unknown) aba “writer's ‘writer thai, a workshop leader's writer; whose fiction, oddly, never appears anymore in New York-based magazines but who writs frequently foe The New Jor Review of Books and publishes new books to raves frm a vaity of New ‘York organs, ehows in how many ways a writer can alip between these two cul- tures before winding up perfectly poised between them And yet what's so striking is how distinct the cultures do, infact, foc! and how dstintty they at least pretend to funtion, On the level of individual expecicoce, each can fel hemeti, and the traveler from one tothe other finds herself in an aien land. ‘The fact tat it's posible to tave without a passpor, of tobe granted dul t= exh, makes them no les distine. “The model forthe MFA fiction writers her program counterpart the poet. Pets have log been professionally bound to weademia; decades before the banketing ofthe country with MFA programs requiring profesor, the pots took t the gad schools, eaming PhDs in English and other literary disciplines to finance thei eal vocation. Ths came of age the oncept of the poet-teacher. The poet cams money ata teacher; and, a higher level of profesional aecomplishment, fom grants and prizes; and, at an even higher level, from appearance fees at ctr colleges. She docs not, a8 a rule, eam money by publishing books of poems—it has beoome almost inconesivable tht anyone outside a university Tibrary will rad them. The consequences of this economic arangement forthe quality of American poetry have been often bemoaned (poems are insular, sweane, gratuitously allusve, et eters, if poorly understood, Of more interest ‘here is the economic arrangement proper, andthe ways in which it has become ‘that of large number of fiction writers as wel, ‘As the fiction writerteacher becomes the norm, the fiction MIA also becomes an odd hybrid. On the one hand, MFA programs ae sil studio base:Juries of time during which both serious and dilctantsh people can develop thei artist shill outside the demands ofthe mack, In this way, the programs spite toa kind of immanent (and convenient) ides, it doesnt matter whether te student publishes now orn en years o never, whether her degree ever earns her a penny, at log as she serves her suse. Oa the other hand, at available teaching jobs muhiply, MEA programs become increasingly prepofesional They provide afer ll, a terminal degree in burgeoning field. And (the ambi- ‘ous student rightly asks) why not ener that fed straightaway? Afterall, thre se actual jobs available for MEA holders, while the other humanities stagnate and overall unemployment hovers around 10 percent ‘Thus the fieton writer's MPA increasingly resembles the poet's old PAD; not in the rigors ofthe degree isel—gtting an MFA isso easy—but inthe way it immerses the writer in a professional academic network. SHSeaTRISSNEGS ‘ad Breil More links, more connections, ae provided by the atractive, ‘unread, uiversiyfunded literary quartets that are swapped between these places and by the endowments and discretionary funds that deliver an extab- lished writer teacher from her home program to a diferent one, fr a well-paid right or week, with everybody's drinks expensed. This system of circulating patronage may have some pedegopcel valu but exists cic to supplement the income of the writer-eacher and, perhaps more important, to impress onthe sa- dents the more glamorous sid of becoming—of aspiring to become—a writer teacher ‘Gree! Just asthe critic publishes her dissertation in order to secure a job inam evertghtening market, the ition writer publishes her book of stores, or her novel o cap off her MEA. There is n element of liberation in this, however houses become ever more fearful and defensive, batened dovm against the encroachments of other “medi,” old and nev and merely imagined —but the MFA writer doesn't have to deal with those big houses. Andi ahe does get pub- ished by one, she doesnt neod a six-figure advance. On the whole, independent and university presses (as fr the poet and the ert) will do just fine. The MEA ‘writer is also exempt from publicity to a lrg extent-she sil checks her Ama zon ranking obsessively, as everyone does, but she can do so with a dollop of| ‘humor and not as an inquiry into professional survival. Eistesda5e eit int Yes, but The MPA writer escapes certain pressures only to submit to others i zk i righ be willing to toi obserely fr decade or more, nourishing herself with ‘the thought ofa big psychi and financial payff that might never come, the MFA writer not Sbe has no actal physical New York t cling o, no partis to attend if her degoe is ished but her book isnt, she's purely a cast-out fom the world in which the wishes to move. This can encourage the publication of| slight and sometimes premature books, books that might give readers, and the “wtter herself the wrong idea of what she ean do,‘Then, later in the cares, comes the more obvious pressure otto publish a alle has, afer all, become a profesor, and a profesor gets pid to profes. W's not just that MEA students are encouraged to write stris in workshop, ‘hough this iste its that the entre culture is steeped in the for. TSENG partly on ther lick of rigor, there's no time for plosrng through novels, Also, scores of colleges now have associated literary jourals, which tend overwhelm ingly to focus onthe shot story; by publishing in as many ofthese as posible, 2 young writer begins building the reputation that will eventually secure he a job fsa teachorsitey,andan older writer ustain het CV by the samme mess‘everyone knows that no one reads short stories. ANS that Khel STOREE Bul there's a dialectical reversal to be found bere, in which the storyiovel ebate reveals itself to be just one aspect of the MEANY cultural divide, and in which the story might even be winning. One ofthe clearest sign of that divide is the way that different groups of writers are read, valued, and discussed in the two different places”—one could for instance, live lng, ful fe inare magnified when they put out a book and shrink in between. Reputation in ‘thi world depends diretiy on the market and the publishing eyele, the reviews and the prizes, and so all except those at the very top have litle reason to hope {or a durable readership. The contemporary New York canon tends to be more comtemporary than canonit consists of popular new novel, and previous ‘books by the authors of same. ‘The MFA canon works diferent. The rapid expansion of MFA programs in recent decades as opened up large institutional spaces above and below: above, for writerprofesors who teach MFA. stunts; below, for undergraduate stu- dents who are taught by MPAs (and by former MPAs hied as adjunct). All told, program fition amounts to new discipline, with a new curriculum. This ‘new curculum consists mainly of shor stories, and the shoe fiction anthologies commonly used in introductory eourses become the primary mechanism by : 5 a 8 : 2 z B z‘GF(2008) rounds out the picture, overlapping with Scribner but aot Vintage, adding stil younger writers, and emphesizing recent contibtios fo the ani diy, explicitly stylized or stylish traition—for instance, Aimee Bender (USC), Gary Lute (Pit-Grosasbor), snd Mary Caponegro Bard)” Drown, both of which ae reliably anthologized and have entered the conseious- : i ‘GHRIETGWR—as well as the institutional means to disseminate, perpetuate, and replonsh it, Ths eanon centers on short work, and distinguishes itself from the NYG, atleast atthe top ofthe market where Franzen, Dail, and Roth reside z i i i i E E i i t z i iKeeps alive the reputations of great (Ann Beattie), near-great Joy Williams), and merely excellent writers whom publishing has Tong since passed by. ‘The year 1970, not coincidently also marks the beginning of the careers of rmany of the eminent writers who emerged from the MFA heyday, and who now hold the most distinguished chairs inthe MFA eure. Ths the MFA canon is a living canon not just by defnition—i is, afer all, “contemporary” liteature— ‘but because the writers who constitute it re constant prosences on the scene and tive shapers ofthe canons contents. They tech (however esluctaty) they sdvise; they antbologize; they travel fom program to program to read. A. ‘writer's university becomes an auiomatie champion of her work, and as he tu- dents disperse to jb at other schools, so docs the championing. "The waiter doesn't assign her own work-she doesnt ave to—but she assigns that of her fiends, and invites them to speak. I will be interesting to see what happens ‘when this group of older writers dies (hey are unlikely to give up their jobs beforehand); whether the MFA canon will leap forward, or back, or witch ‘wacks entirely, to accommodate the intrest, private and aesthetic of a younger sroup of wrterteachers. Perhaps (among other posibiliies) the MFA culture will tke a tum toward the novel “Writer moves toward the Hollywood model, Not hecause fietion writers earn ‘heir kop a8 screenwriters (afew do, but that was by and large an eae er MFAINYC could be said to have replaced NYCILA as an organizing cultral rubric) but because New York publishing increasingly resembles the Hollywood ‘world of bloekbusteror- bust, in which 2 handful of books eam all the hype and «do humongous busines; others succeed as low-budget indies; and the rst are releasd toa shudder of silence, i atall. Advances skew to the very high and the pitifully low, and the overall economics ofthe industry amplify and reinforce this come gap, a8 the blockbuster novelist not only sells her book to an atu‘film studious stepping ou of the shadow world into the true bright one—but ko parcels out lucrative translation rights to foreign markets. The alvance mul- ‘ips; the money makes money. And what's better than money-—peope will scualy read the book. ‘Thus the iterary-comporate publishing industry comes to replicate the pre valing economic logic, in which the rch get richer and the rest live om hope and copyediting, As with any ulracompettve industry, lke professional basketball or hedge funds, exceptional prestige accrucs to the successes, and with some reason, The NYC water has tocar money by writing (or else consider herself a failure on her own terms), which gives era certain enlarged dignity and ambi- ‘ion. It also imposes certs strictures. First off at already mentioned, it demands that he writer write novel '8f On the one hand, a weakened market fo literary fiction makes publishing houses les likely thn ever to devote resources to work that doesn’, ke a pop song, “hook” the reader right away. On th other, the MFA-diiven shi in the scademic canon has alered the approach of writers outside the university as well as those within, Syntactic intricsey, narrative ambiguity, formal innovation, and even length ‘were aids fe canonization, feeding the university's noed for books apainst which students and professors could test and prove ther interpretive silt. Canoniza- ‘on, in tu, contributed t public renown.durable readership without suceumbing (at least not fully) to the logic of the ‘blockbuster, Tt was a strategy shaped by, and suited to, the era of the English ‘department, which valued scholarly interpretation over writerly imitstion, the ‘Nongnovel over Hh Sho SNH (And when it came to white males imagining themselves into the canon, it helped thatthe canon was sill composed mostly of white males) ‘The death of David Foster Wallace could be said to mark the end of this qua-_ -s-popular tation, t least temporary. What one notises fit about NYC- -enbiting contemporary fiction is how much sense everyone makes. The best young NYC novelists go to great lengths to write comprehensible prose and tie ‘their plots neat as a bow. How one longs, in a way, for endings like that of DeLill’s first novel, Americana, where everyone just pees on everyone else for ‘RRERBA The trend toward neatness and accesibiliyisoflen posited tobe the consequence ofthe workshops relentless paring. But for NYC writers—despite their depres it might be beter understood at the result of fierce maket pret- sue toward the midlebeow, combined with a deep authrial desire to eommuni- cate to the uninterested The NYC writer knows that to speak obliquely is ‘her work in twenty years; she worries about who might read it now. She's ‘thrown her economic lot in withthe publishers, and he publishers are very, very fle nly nationalist simplii§e Naron & Dixon, say, or American Pastoral (American anything, relly—Pocho, Wife, Rust, Purgatorio, Subversive,Woman). This is nett bite these books, afew of which are excelleat, bt to ctherwise. However naturally large the NYC novelist’ immgination, i shaped by the need to make abroad appeal o communicate quickly, and to be socially 2 2 . i E g e 2 i i 2 5 3 2 Ef. aE uk Ee Fi fe Te BG 3 i Ey BE aa iz bE ee tt ee x i £ i 3 g g ¥ E I j e i H é i i : i Social Responsibility: Regardless of whether reading comprchension aod aten- ‘ion spans have actually deelined, the publishers think they have, and the masket shapes itself eccordingly. The presumed necessity of ‘competing for attention” with other media becomes internalized, and the work comes out erystal clea. ‘Te point is not that good books go snpublished to the contrary, scores of| crappy literary novels continue to get soupped up by hope editors. The pointis that market forces cause some good books tego unnoticed, and even more— 40 go unwritten. : i a 3 ‘None ofthis amounts to a shrewd conspiracy, as mystified outsiders some- ‘mes charg, butt does mean that the NYC water participates in the publishing snd reviewing racket to an unnerving extent. She is an unabashed industry exper. Even if years avay fom finishing her frst novel, she constantly and involuntarily collects information about what the publishing industry noeds, or thinks it necds. Thus the congeniality of Brooklyn becomes a silky binds writers to the demands ofthe market, demands that insinuate themselves into every detail and email of the writer’ if. It seems like a sordid situation ‘Then agin, he publishing industry has always been singularly confused, unable ‘to devote itself filly to cither art or commeres, so perhaps the influence worksboth ways; pethas the NYC writer, by keping the industry close, hopes also to ‘ep it honest, and ile bit ncrested in the att champions. ‘What will happen? Economicelly speaking, the MFA system has announced its ‘outsize ambitions, making huge investments in infrastructure and personnel nd offering gaudy salaries and propitious working conditions to accu top talent ‘superuous books by exlebries, polis end thir former overs. 1. was announced resntly that Zac Smith—one ofthe fw voters equipped by fae todo aberwise—bas accep tented poston at NYU, presumably forthe teal insurance; petaps this maka te Benning ofthe end, sgn dain the fir ther willbe no NYC writs at alas a band of writers complished enough to each in NY. New York will have Become it bas Tong, been ecoming—aplace where some writers go fora Wanderiahr or two beeen the completion of heir MEAS ad the commencement of thir tesching creme. No one with “tray” spats wil exes to er ving by publishing books; the elory days when publishes ill wad benvcen patronage and commerce willbe much lamencd. The lilovers who used o besome editor and sgents wil dct MEA programs instead the book industry wil become a rational — tht is as single mindy devoted to proit—as every oer epi nds “The voters, even moreso than now, will write fr othr writers. And so thee orsmon sibition snd miston and salvation, tei profession indoed thee aly hope—willbe oak waters fu all +