Over at Lit Hub, Lorraine Berry writes about “How the literary class system is impoverishing literature“:
One of the panelists, an editor, offered that the first thing he looked for when skimming through the cover letter was whether the writer possessed an MFA. He did this, he hastened to qualify, not because it guaranteed that the submitter would be a better writer, but because taking a year or two off out of one’s life to dedicate oneself to writing proved that one was serious as a writer. I came off my chair in anger—how could he assert such a thing? My friend pulled me back down, but I continued to fume. Who has more dedication: the person who has the financial wherewithal to spend time in a writing program, or the writer who writes despite having to work full-time, early in the morning, with absolutely no one but themselves for motivation?
Working class novelists: who ever heard of such a thing?!
The recently deceased Jim Harrison, a truly great writer, slipped the point into one of his novellas that the same sort of elite arts program networking that has steadily diminished the visual arts is having the same effect on fiction writing via the MFA. The taste-makers select from their narrow social world those “talents” with a similar background to their own. One can see this sort of wagon-circling in academia and likely in the political world as well. It’s not that anyone is consciously elitist- it’s just exceedingly difficult for people from outside that world to break in. In fact, one starts to notice how the professions that traditionally attract liberals are one by one becoming these cloistered and airless sinecures that are shut off to people who don’t come from a narrowly privileged background. They still define what is “serious” and “culturally significant”, at least to NPR. And yet, their importance in the eyes of the larger society is less and less evident.
(Note: When educated progressives ask themselves why so many working class Americans vote Republican “against their economic interests”, they assume it must be attributable to racism or a lack of education.)
When educated progressives ask themselves why so many working class Americans vote Republican “against their economic interests”, they assume it must be attributable to racism or a lack of education.
The funny part is that the oh-so-serious people can’t seem to grasp that anyone and everyone might not be a single-issue voter who attributes economic concerns above all others, in spite of all evidence to that effect.
Which, in turn, speaks volumes as to the value of said oh-so-serious persons.
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Seriously, who do you THINK came up with all the ads showing Obama’s Jackbooted Thugs coming to take your guns??
And what sort of paranoid moron gives out their mailing address in order to get ammunition?
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Hmmm. How does Chuck Palahniuk fit into this description? His social background was vernacular and scruffy, he got a J-school degree at age 24, quit journalism after two years and worked as a mechanic for eight years, and then took up f/t writing when some of his works proved to be bestsellers.
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The thing is that there is a catch. The past system where you can get a job because the boss liked your moxy was based on a lot of what we would call white privilege. It really was only true for white people and most likely only white men at that. Women, anybody of non-sufficient whiteness, the entire LGBT population, and even many white men were effectively excluded from either formal or informal paths of advancement. A white person who could write well might get a job at newspaper or doing something else by sheer moxy but an African-American could not. Making everything about having the right credentials and connections has some very big disadvantages but it might be the only way to have an elite that is really diverse rather than limited to one race.
In other words we can have a credentialized but open system or we can have moxy based but closed system but we can’t have a moxy based open system.
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Actually, in public employment and in recruitment to large enterprises, you can have an exam based system. Provided, of course, that you don’t have lawyers second guessing the examiners.
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(Inner city test for cops maybe ought to look a little different than rural test for cops, yes?)
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1. Whites in 1948 constituted 87% of the population.
2. Erma Bombeck got her first newspaper job as a high school student ca. 1945. Nina Totenberg had some college but has never earned a BA degree. IIRC, Linda Ellerbee also has no degree. Both women broke into journalism ca. 1965.
3. George Schuyler broke into journalism in the 1920s without a degree. Alex Haley did so in the 1950s.
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Lee brings up some good points. Meritocracy has its problems but the old white boy network is what ruled the day when people became journalists after high school. The MFA does probably promote a significantly similar literary type of style that appeals to a specific market. The SF community has been raging against literary fiction for years on this lines.
That being said, I need concrete evidence on the types of people who are in MFA programs. I have seen people damn our current system because it requires people to take on a lot of debt for all degrees. The charge that you highlighted makes the opposite claim by stating on the middle class and above go into MFA programs. Which is it? Are universities and MFAs now just for the rich or are too many people taking on debt to attend?
In general, there are a lot of scams in the artworld beyond the MFA. I have seen plenty of people pay good money to attend weekend writer workshops or week-long writer workshops which are kind of like short versions of MFA programs but you get your writing critiqued by authors you admire.
A six-week workshop at Clarion (which specializes in speculative fiction) costs 3800 dollars plus application fee. The 3800 only gives partial board. You are on your own for lunch and dinner on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Plus there is the cost of taking that much time off from work and travel to and from the workshop location.
Is Clarion more or less scandalous than MFA programs?
http://alexbledsoe.com/2016/01/15/thoughts-on-clarion-privilege-and-gaiman/
Clarion is not the only version of this. There are lots of writer’s workshops for all genres and equal or greater levels of expense. There are Master Classes for would-be actors or even just brush up classes to keep your technique alive between shows or auditions.
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To be sure, not every good writer was in the war, but that type of outside the writing-field work was the influence of serveral generations of writers. The current generation seems to only have the MFA programs to use as the basis of what the world is. Journalism is good, if they actually do journalism, learn the trade, go out and actually talk to people and get a feel for what they are actually thinking and doing. How they talk, what they actually drink. What caluses are, how they are formed.
When educated progressives ask themselves why so many working class Americans vote Republican “against their economic interests”, they assume it must be attributable to racism or a lack of education. Nails the thesis to the gate.
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The “educated progressives think…” thing has some truth but is becoming it’s own simple stereotype or trope. Because all libs think the same and have never know R’s or rural folk or etc.
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Was mostly using the war as an example, as Twain worked on the Mississippi, etc. Very few writers were able to straight write such as Faulkner did, although he did volenteer for the British army in WWI (too short for the US.) But mostly I feet that the culture of writing was such, through most of the 20th, that it could absorb the few such as Faulkner.
The educated progessive bits was Rufas’ line, as I would leave out progressives, and simply use some varient of educated. I know enough members of most political groups to realize that this is more of a class issue here in the US, R’s and D’s both do it, and it shows.
/Shrug
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There are a lot of academics, ex-soldiers, adventurers, teachers, mechanics, and cooks, and stay-at-home moms who have written amazing things. There are also a lot of academics, ex-soldiers, adventurers, teachers, mechanics, and cooks, and stay-at-home moms who have written crap.
Great writing should stand on its own, not what you think of the life choices of its writer.
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Makes me suspect that the odds favor my own small efforts at fiction fall into the dreck class…
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Actually, my favorite author was a postal clerk.
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My favorite singers were assassins.
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I just thought there was some irony that in the threads below making that point, there was a conversation about what kind of life someone had to have led in order to be able to write well.
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As I said, there are a lot of academics, ex-soldiers, adventurers, teachers, mechanics, and cooks, and stay-at-home moms who have written amazing things. There are also a lot of academics, ex-soldiers, adventurers, teachers, mechanics, and cooks, and stay-at-home moms who have written crap.
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Personally, I don’t fault the novel or Harrison for that. He presented his views and wrote about them quite well, warts and all. What more do we want from our artists? Iowa School MFA training????
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I was so hoping that this would be followed by “If he does, I immediately throw his submission in the fire.”
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http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane
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one starts to notice how the professions that traditionally attract liberals are one by one becoming these cloistered and airless sinecures that are shut off to people who don’t come from a narrowly privileged background.
The irony, of course, is that all the MFA-types are studying Faulkner to figure out how they can
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More seriously, you’re probably right on the margins (or in the main) with the reversie being true of what I’m suggesting up there. I DO think liberals tend to operate in something like an intellectual vacuum frequently enough. Which isn’t to say that the other side doesn’t operate in a vacuum as well. But rather that the difference resides in the meaning of “intellectual”.
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Actually, in the context of Rufus’ post, I think I’m right and will defend that view at least until your next response is submitted. For folks who care about the Arts, liberal-dominated MFA culture is the equivalent of a creativity-destroying neutron bomb.
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There is an alternate path, though. There are tons of authors out there publishing e-books and getting paid for it.
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I know someone who is theoretically still screening books for Amazon to publish.
He reads the slush pile — not the cover letters. And there’s a lot of slush pile.
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