MFA vs. NYC

There is a new book out: MFA vs. NYC: The Two Culutres of American Fiction. It sounded morbidly fascinating to me, so I got it. What followed is some facebook posts and then a bit more discussion.

The two cultures are Creative Writing workshops and the "literary" community in New York City, people who all live in one neighborhood in Brooklyn, hang out with one another and aspire to six figure advances. There is a lot more to American fiction: all the genres, for example. And there is a lot more to the US than one neighborhood in Brooklyn. Writers live everywhere.

I got MFA vs NYC on my nook and have read 100 pages. It is clear that I am not a writer. I've had none of these experiences. On the other hand, I have worked in a printing plant in Detroit and an art museum in Minneapolis and three different warehouses... I have not been a short order cook, which is fine. I never wanted to work in food service. And the merchant marine was out, because I get seasick. But it would have been nice to be a forest fire lookout...

The printing plant was not like Kinko's. The presses were two stories tall with two stories of shock absorbers below them. They couldn't move the presses, so they turned the plant into a kind of fortress surrounded by tall fences, with security guards at every entrance. I had an office job and got to wear a pretty dress. The guys on the plant floor were covered with ink and got union wages.

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I am most of the way through MFA vs. NYC. Interesting book. If you are a writer, your response to the book will be autobiographical. I am up to Fredric Jameson and the workshop rules for writing: Write what you know. Find your own voice. Show, don't tell.

No, no and no.

It's good to know where show, don't tell comes from. (Not from Jameson, from the workshop culture. Jameson does not seem to like show, don't tell much.) I hate it. It is so obviously untrue. And I remember when -- almost 50 years ago -- one of my professors mentioned that many of her former students were writing back to her and saying, "I think I have finally found my own voice." Find your own voice? I thought. What is this crap? As for write what you know, why? Did Homer fight in the Trojan War? Must have been difficult, given that he was blind. How about the author of Beowulf? Met a lot of dragons, did he?

How about tell a story and use whatever techniques are needed to tell the story? The story is primary, not the author. (Lyric poetry may require a personal voice -- or maybe not. Is the voice of "My Last Duchess" Browning's voice? How about "Andrea del Sarto?")

I've written before about how disturbing I find workshops. It's a personal, irrational response. The literary community in Brooklyn does not sounds attractive either. I think it's important to have experiences, know places, be outside the literary world, which sounds hermetic to me, also far too expensive. Rents in New York are insane. You can't mine your own childhood and family and neighborhood forever.

I have suspected for a long time that the Cold War and the McCarthy Era injured American culture big time. It turns out that the Iowa Writing Workshop's second director was a major cold warrior, who saw creative writing as a way to fight communism. He got a lot of grants from conservative Midwestern businessmen and even one grant from the CIA. The essay about him is interesting. Though it doesn't manage to convince me that CIA was behind the Iowa Workshop and does not make clear how the director's politics influenced teaching at the Workshop. But it's something to think about. Did the Cold War change American fiction? Do the two cultures of this book, which seem way too closed-in to me, come out of the McCarthy Era?

This does not mean that workshops are invariably bad. I think they would have been for me. But Joe Haldeman went to Iowa, apparently liked the experience, and turned into a really fine writer of science fiction. His writing has a crispness that I suspect comes from the Workshop. But to this he adds broad vision and big ideas.