PrintThe question of whether or not creative writing can be taught in a classroom is as contentious and unanswerable as “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” MFA writing programs have always incited criticism, especially recently—most notably in Mark McGurl’s “The Program Era,” which was released in April. As Louis Menand notes in his New Yorker review of the book, McGurl’s underlying message is that “teaching creative writing should always be a scandal.”
McGurl’s attack is no surprise, given the economic purgatory we’re in. Beyond the issue of whether “creativity” can be taught lies an even greater one: the practicality of getting a non-professional, non-academic degree. Just last week, The Eye’s lead story questioned the utility of graduate school—and if toiling away for six years to get a PhD in literature or mathematics doesn’t guarantee a job, why should anyone bother investing tens of thousands of dollars to obtain an MFA in fiction or poetry?
Binnie Kirshenbaum, the chair of Columbia’s graduate writing program, may have a convincing answer. According to her, as many people as ever are enrolling in MFA programs because “the state of the economy and getting an MFA are mutually exclusive. They have no bearing on one another.”
Peter Barrett, a second-year fiction student in the program, goes further by claiming that writers are actually “well-suited” to the recession: “The economic climate caught up to us. Literary fiction has been a dying field for a long, long time.”
And Barrett and Kirshenbaum agree not only that creative writing can be taught, but also that MFA programs are effective in doing so. “It’s no different than the study of any art form,” Kirshenbaum says. “We look at the work done and ask good questions with no easy answers; we make comments, suggestions. We have a conversation. We read, and we scrutinize what we’ve read. We dare each other, and the work improves.”
The frequency of the word “we” in Kirshenbaum’s response is significant—it’s the underlying reason why MFA programs are so appealing. By nature, writing is an isolating activity; writers need a community to stay motivated and sane. This community, of course, consists of both students and faculty. “I’ve learned a whole lot,” says Kirshenbaum, who has been teaching at Columbia for 11 years. “Just the atmosphere—being around people who are excited about what they’re doing … there’s always invigorating conversation.”
Barrett’s reasons for applying for an MFA in the first place are grounded in the program’s communal nature as well. “The MFA is like an extended residency in that you have a space and a time to do your work,” he explains. “It creates a structure where it’s socially acceptable to pursue your art. This doesn’t match up with the reality of the publishing world.”
Kirshenbaum and Barrett also concur that Columbia’s MFA program possesses characteristics that make it superior to most others. “It’s much more rigorous,” says Kirshenbaum. “Students that come to Columbia take far more classes … We don’t just hand out a degree. We have all these special seminars and lectures that are geared toward teaching reading the way a writer would read.” The preponderance of other MFA writing programs are, as Barrett notes, “very workshop-heavy.” But only three workshops total are required at Columbia; the two years of coursework are mostly focused upon “craft-oriented lectures and seminars,” he says.
And then there’s the fact that Columbia is located in America’s literary capital. Not surprisingly, many members of the program’s faculty work in publishing. “We have a foot in the door of the publishing world,” Barrett says. “This is reflected in the number of students who have gotten book deals.”
But those students are the exception rather than the rule. The book market has always been cutthroat, and now, with bookstores and publishing houses crumbling left and right, the future of literature seems bleaker than ever. The potential death of fiction was even the topic of a panel at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, which featured three contemporary novelists: T Cooper, Elizabeth Nunez, and Keith Gessen. Cooper immediately began the discussion by quoting Derek Strauss, one of her friends: “People have been trying to send fiction to the sick room for fifty years.” Later, in a moment of impassioned frustration, Nunez declared, “I think I’m a good writer. But nobody’s buying the books.”
So is there hope for MFA graduates, aspiring writers who haven’t even gotten a toe in the publishing door? Strangely enough, the answer is yes. Although huge commercial companies like Random House and HarperCollins are, as Barrett explains, “turning away from literary fiction because it’s no longer economically viable for their model,” a lot of smaller presses like Graywolf, Turtle Books, and Akashic are opening up. According to Cooper, these presses are uniquely positioned: “They publish less books, and publish better. They know how to select products and where to send them,” he says.
It’s a reciprocal relationship. Small presses care about each and every one of their books, and their editors have a close relationship with their authors, whom they don’t view as commodities. They ensure not only that fiction writers will continue to be published, but also that they will be “well-published,” as Kirshenbaum puts it.
Would-be Jonathan Safran Foers can also try turning to the Internet. But Kirshenbaum, at least, is skeptical about resorting to this kind of self-publishing. As she says, it hasn’t been “fully explored or exploited yet … It’s exciting, but I don’t think it’s quite found its professional level.” Then again, who knows—maybe “myuselessthesis.com,” a MFA grad’s bildungsroman, might end up surpassing fanfiction.net in popularity sooner than we think.