Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
– Flannery O’Connor
FIRST, ON WHAT WE KNOW
We MFA writing students are having a grand time. We appear nonchalant, cheerful, full of promise; we eat pizza and drink beers and speak up in class, saying things like—but has this story got, well, too much rising action a la George Saunders? Is this pattern perhaps a bit exhaustive? Do you think you’ve earned this? We seem so critical and astute, like we know what the hell we are doing.
For example, here’s what to do: decide if you are a lower-middle-class realist or technomodernist or, god forbid, a high cultural pluralist. Be a fan of Lorrie Moore but object to her depiction of men. Ask: Why are they always either dyslexic or in chronic state of stultification? Likewise, revere Updike’s prose style but despise those “two scoops of vanilla ice cream.” Bring a flask to class and drink from it in semi-surreptitious manner while discussing above issues with appropriate fervor. Attribute your red face to shyness, anger, the heat of close bodies. Go to readings and “make connections.” And if you’re really ambitious, participate in slush-pile readings of your so-so respectable literary journal and ridicule the cover letters of those who have obviously never been through The Program.
What not to do: cry while your story is being workshopped. Use predictable phrases like “easy grace.” Remember to start with the blow job. But please, don’t blow your load too quickly.
ANXIETY
Even with all this know-how, a seeping suspicion begins to enter the minds of final-year MFA students. As we get closer to graduating, we might start to think that perhaps we have not actually learned that much. That maybe we were better writers before we entered The Program, and that we’ve actually just had a vacation with our student-aid money. It will have to be repaid! In our worst moments, we begin to wonder whether we’ve destroyed our genius by subscribing to this institutional mind-meld.
Or maybe contaminated genius isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s any one of these:
1. These ten pages of writing—does this count as a novel…? (No.)
2. Aren’t I supposed to have like a fucking masterpiece by now? (No, but you do have two or three stories that are maybe worth publishing in semi-popular online website.)
2. Am I going to get a job after this? (Probably not.) Will I have to go back to food service? (Probably yes.)
3. Has my writing gotten better? Have I become good enough to get an agent? (Shrugs.)
4. Have I made “connections”? (Do classmates count?)
5. Should I just give in and apply for a PhD or something? (Yes.)
These doubts keep me up at night, I don’t deny it. I will be $20,000 less poor! Sometimes I cross busy streets without thinking; pull subconscious kamikazes. Abort mission? Abort now?
INSECURITY AND POSITIVE THINKING
My therapist says: break down a moment of insecurity and replace it with positive thinking. I’ll admit I was a snob on the first day of school. When we were asked to go around in a circle and recommend a book or share our favorite writer, someone said “Faulkner” and I shuddered. (Obviously hadn’t read anything outside college.) Another person said “I don’t have any favorite writers.” The instructor, David Lipsky, pried further. “Fine. What was the last thing you read?” The person blushed. “I don’t remember what it was called.” I was, like most first-year students, horrified because I was compensating for my own insecurity. When it was my turn I “recommended” the most obscure writer I could think of: Raymond Radiguet. (He wrote two books and died at the age of 19.) I wasn’t too confident about The Program then.
But right now, as I am typing this in my luxurious student-loan funded apartment in New York City, I am feeling pretty positive. I feel like I want to reaffirm the experience I’ve had in my Program, (currently ranked #11 in the country according to Seth Abramson), because I want to make sure there’s a voice in defense of this thing I’m in. “Please, don’t write another negative article,” a friend pleaded. “Write a positive one. Make us feel legitimate.”
DOUBT
Because maybe you’ve heard: there’s been a lot of talk about how American Fiction is doomed as we know it. Several provocative books have recently come out to spur this conversation along. One is The Program Era: Postwar Fiction And the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl. The second is Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields. The third one is Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.
Last semester, I took a brilliant course—(and I’m being earnest, I might copy some of his syllabus for my undergraduates)—designed by one of my favorite writers, Jonathan Lethem. The theme of the course—though he may disagree with my appellation—was CRAFT 101: FAILED WRITERS.
In this class about Failed Writers and their Failed Writing, we read several important texts. Lost Illusions, by Balzac. New Grub Street, George Gissing. Lost in the Funhouse, John Barth. “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” David Foster Wallace. (Notice the pattern yet?) Old School, Tobias Wolff. Sixty Stories, Donald Barthelme. Lorrie Moore, “People Like That Are The Only People Here.” In these texts, writers are disillusioned not only with life but with the act of writing, narrative, language, even the idea of art itself.
The moral of Lethem’s class seemed to be: “This job—writing—is a dangerous one. Proceed with caution.” Fair warning. Self-identify as a weakling? Best find another occupation, son.
Of all these terrifying and perplexing books, perhaps the most perplexing was McGurl’s The Program Era. As an MFA student on “Planet MFA” reading McGurl’s book from “Planet PhD,” the experience felt not unlike being a monkey in a research lab who has just come across the research notes. What is it saying, we hoot in panic! We don’t really understand it! But is it saying that this is actually a bad experiment? That the “creative” in “creative writing” is being hand-wrung of all its funky juices?
Louis Menand writes in his review that the book depicts entertainingly “the world of creative writing as an ant farm, in which writer-ants go about busily executing the tasks they have been programmed for. Writing is a technology, after all, and there is a sense in which human beings who write can be thought of as machines.” There’s nothing wrong with this project; McGurl simply wants to analyze the systems through which writing is now produced to see if he can find some patterns.
But if Program Products can be boiled down into so many generalizations, which McGurl does successfully, it seems strange that anyone who self-identifies as “creative” would willingly subject herself to such an experiment. To go to school is to be schooled; that seems obvious. It’s the idea of attempting to school art that makes us uncomfortable. David Shields might argue that this schooling is what causes literature to be behind the times, inclining writers toward old-timey third-person omniscient fiction when we should be embracing new forms! Hybrid works! The personal essay! (He’s an Iowa grad, I see where he’s coming from.)
Elif Batuman reignites the debate in her new article “Get a Real Degree,” by paying special attention to McGurl’s argument that one of the faults of MFA Programs is that it has helped teach technique so well and made so many good writers that we simply can’t read them all. It’s not that the Program has made us worst writers, it’s that it’s made us so good it’s impossible to tell who is bad anymore. Higher education is the great equalizer; but apparently this isn’t the the goal with art.
THE MFA PONZI SCHEME
MFA graduates who have left the nest and are now teaching “Creative Writing” at obscure colleges experience another unexpected disillusionment, that perhaps they’re participating in an “MFA Ponzi Scheme” of sorts. There’s no way some of these students are going to “make it,” they think. Hack writers teaching more hack writers ad infinitum will lead to more accredited hack writers than the world can sustain. I’ve noticed that the people who like to use this phrase are writers who are very smart but antisocial and harbor grim, post-apocalyptic visions of the future.
TO MFA OR NOT MFA
The essential question, TO MFA OR NOT MFA, is one that obsesses every burgeoning writer. Entire blogs and youtube channels have been made to talk about this very question. Go there if you find this discussion really gripping. For now, here is some loose data:
New York Times Hardcover Fiction Top Five
- SAFE HAVEN, Nicholas Sparks — No MFA
- FREEDOM, Jonathan Franzen — No MFA
- WICKED APPETITE, by Janet Evanovich — No MFA
- THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson — Swedish, therefore, No MFA
- THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett — No MFA
NewYorker’s 20 Under 40 List with Age and MFA Breakdown
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32 — Johns Hopkins
Chris Adrian, 39 — Iowa
Daniel Alarcón, 33 — Iowa
David Bezmozgis, 37 — No Writing MFA
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38 — Iowa
Joshua Ferris, 35 — UCI
Jonathan Safran Foer, 33 — No MFA
Nell Freudenberger, 35 — NYU
Rivka Galchen, 34 — Columbia
Nicole Krauss, 35 — No MFA
Yiyun Li, 37 — Iowa
Dinaw Mengestu, 31 — Columbia
Philipp Meyer, 36 — Michener Center
C. E. Morgan, 33 — No MFA
Téa Obreht, 24 — Cornell
Z Z Packer, 37 — Iowa
Karen Russell, 28 — Columbia
Salvatore Scibona, 35 — Iowa
Gary Shteyngart, 37 — Hunter
Wells Tower, 37 — Columbia
My own addition: Tao Lin, 27 — Disowned by NYU
A lot of these writers have MFAs. Are they writers because they have MFAs and were taught in that crafty MFA way? Or are they writers because they are writers?
Having had Jonathan Safran Foer (No MFA) as a workshop teacher I can testify that while he’s a talented writer, he wasn’t the most solid “craft” teacher. He seemed to lack (or resist) the vocabulary other teachers used to talk about structure, tone, voice. “You’re being lazy,” he would say. I wanted to know—how? I perked up. But maybe I was being lazy! It was just the feeling one got from reading my writing. The best advice I got from him was when he told me to “be more cruel” in my dialogue.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t really know. Be more cutting.”
“Cutting?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
I liked this advice, because it pointed to something good writing needed to have that wasn’t easy to locate or fix. In his class, instead of talking about sentence construction, we had conversations about magic and illusion; we told each other oral stories; we were visited by a rabbi and Liev Schreiber. Jonathan’s own practice was an intuitive one that couldn’t be shared; it was a practice learned from the gut. Was this non-crafty teaching any better?
CONCLUSION
As for me and a lot of the classmates and writers I queried, we find this debate about whether to MFA extremely dull. “How can free time and community support be a bad thing?” “If anything, I feel more free to experiment because I’m exposed to writing I wouldn’t otherwise have read.” For a person who really wants to become a writer, none of this matters. She will go to school if she feels it will help her become a better writer; she will not go if she feels it will harm her. She will teach in a Program if she needs the money, she will not teach if she is can find another way to make a living. Even if she decides the Program is nonsense, she can go her own way. Publishers for the most part (I still believe, having worked for a publisher) don’t really care if a writer has gotten an MFA. Unlike other fine arts, which perhaps have more stringent MFA policies, writers can still become insanely successful without any institutional hand holding. Writing, thankfully, is still a singles event—we choose our own music and sequined outfits and dance our hearts out, even if nobody is looking. The hope is that eventually, someone will.
Perhaps there is still come collective nostalgia for the kind of old-school extremism which I always associate with the image of an enormous Charles Olson clad in unwashed sarape raging on a tabletop at Black Mountain, or Gordon Lish publicly and ruthlessly ridiculing seemingly okay lines these poor students have labored over. Maybe that’s what it takes to convince people we are really trying our best to make work that is compelling and good and full of heart. Maybe Programs do baby us, as McGurl suggests, and what we need instead is to be torn down, discouraged, and see who survives in the end. But life is already like that: life is going to be the real test, the real art school. And none of us will be able to avoid that.
Right now I have a workshop with Zadie Smith, who is the most precise teacher I have ever had. She is also incredibly blunt and truthful in her comments. She reasons with us like we are committed adults and we take her advice seriously. She puts our writing on an overhead projector and line-edits each page. She pays attention. “Cliche?” She writes in the margin. “What’s new about this?” and then “Really?” For this specificity, we adore her—unanimously. Zadie doesn’t have an MFA.
141 responses
To MFA or to NOT MFA…?
Or,
To MFA or NOT to MFA…?
— (Former)(Adjunct)Professor(Columbia)(EXPENSIVE!)Rick Rofihe(No MFA)
“Jonathan’s own practice was an intuitive one that couldn’t be shared; it was a practice learned from the gut. Was this non-crafty teaching any better?”
I experience both sides of this in the program I am in (#42 on same list). Both can work together quite well.
I highly recommend Nora Delaney’s review of The Program Era at http://www.criticalflame.org/nonfiction/0709_delaney.htm:
“With mass-produced literature, we now have mass-produced writers as well, both in America and increasingly across the (Anglophone) world. This does not mean, however, that all M.F.A. writing reads like it came off an assembly line: without the M.F.A. program, we might not have had the dark fables of Flannery O’Connor nor the terse stories of Raymond Carver — and the variety of postwar writing that hinges on concerns about class, ethnicity, and technology. McGurl dutifully brings us to the conclusion that our cache of books — both good and bad — would be much smaller without the program.”
Fundamental issue with MFAs– they teach craft. Great if you want to learn a trade, not so useful if you want to be a genius. Because, let’s face it, any of us would rather read an amazing story dictated by an illiterate drunk than a boring “in the house and around the yard” drama expertly crafted by a well-turned Program writer. The primary function of the MFA program is to provide writers who have mediocre talent or low inspiration with the tools they will need to nonetheless earn a living in the trade (either as a teacher or a yeoman writer).
I mean, the whole concept of an MFA program is basically the “focus group” concept. Let’s take your product and run it by a committee of individuals so they can smooth out the rough edges and make it fit for public consumption. But, the pernicious effects of focus groups on great or challenging art are widely understood. Focus groups bring the objects of their criticism toward an inoffensive mean– not necessarily the goal of really lofty art.
“How can free time and community support be a bad thing?” Because of the opportunity cost. While you are dithering over sentences with Zadie Smith, the next great writer may be living some vital experience that readers will likely find more interesting. I’ve heard it said that MFA Programs are to contemporary writers as Paris was to early modernists. But that is crazy– Paris will always be more inspiring than a workshop in Iowa City. Go forth!
Am I being too harsh?
You’re providing the wrong sort of list. I’d like to know how many people with MFAs actually become exceptional, or even good, writers. That might tell us more about the failure rate.
No, Aaron! That’s really well said and not harsh at all. Every writer needs to “dither” over sentences, we just have the luxury of doing it a couple hours a week with someone who has a lot of experience. Otherwise we’d be doing it in our own room. I think we always assume that genius comes from being drunk and crazy and “having experiences” but I think genius also comes from having a lot of free time. Jack Black is cool, but Proust is cool too, and he never left his room.
But the idea that MFAs somehow destroy genius seems really weird…you definitely don’t go to an MFA program to “become” a genius. Doesn’t genius just happen on its own? There are some people in my program I think are definitely geniuses but they’re doing their own thing and not really affected by the rest of us. And if you really were a “genius” maybe you wouldn’t feel inclined to get an MFA b/c your genius has just manifested itself way before the MFA-getting-age and maybe you already have books out and money and a reputation and therefore the need to go to a place and do nothing but write for 2 years would be unnecessary. You’re right, focus groups do at least round out the edges of “genius”–but if you’re that kind of genius, don’t get an MFA!
Crazy amount of Iowa writers in that top 20 under 40 list. I applied to a handful of schools on a whim, including Syracuse, because I thought I was the only one who idolized Saunders, and I got shut out everywhere.
Back in high school I went to a selective program for kids who liked writing around my state. I was told later I was chosen not because I was any better than the kids that applied, but because they thought I was nice and wouldn’t be a douche when it came time to workshop. I ignored the jab and rode the elative high one feels when they’re the wheat and not the shaft. The false sense of confidence put me in front of a keyboard more than if I hadn’t got picked. It made me want to read more to keep up with the kids who were picked, and reading more made me want to write more.
I think your metaphor about dancing singles with a sequin-sewn get-up is pretty spot-on. So an MFA can sometimes bolser confidence and make a kid want to write more? That’s great. And in the the process, will it get their head locked into a post-post-post modern metafiction mindfuck that ruins their ability to write a sentence without the fear of getting sneared at? Yes, I think it can do that too. So what do we do? Shake it off, find your keyboard, sit down, and destroy the ethernet port on your laptop like Franzen did, so you can get some crappy work done. Then make the crappy work better, get it rejected, and keep trying.
MFA programs are like weight-loss programs. They promise great writers money and fame and the literary equivilent of hot sex, but everybody knows the best way to lose weight is to put down the fucking fork and go get some exercise.
to better sculpt that last sentnece, if a weight-loss program gets you excited about exercising and eating less or introduces you to instructors who can give you good workouts, that’s awesome, too. But for anyone I’ve ever known, the program is like a little sugar-high until the hard work comes. Then, the people who want to be healthy keep working, and the people who just wanted the approval of the head-patters of society (grocery store magazines) go back to the futon to eat a carton of ice cream.
Good article, Anelise.
MFA or no MFA, it takes a lot of stamina to become, and then continue to be, a writer. As a professor at Columbia, I envied the talents of some of the writing students; also their sophisticated backgrounds which gave them much grist for the things they were writing, whereas I grew up in a provincial town which at the time had no bookstore and no library — no library even at school. I listened to Superman on the radio, read Uncle Scrooge comic books, and then, when the time seemed right, I began writing a short story, and it was accepted at The New Yorker.
Aaron, I would suggest (as I did recently in a post on MFAs) that the primary function of an MFA program, for the writer, is exactly to provide a time, space, community and often money to help aspiring writer realize said dream. I would suggest that whatever craft lessons you learn, good or bad, are less important than setting the time aside to really pursue writing and forming friendships with other talented writers who you can share work and ideas with for years to come.
I would also say that if you view a workshop as a focus group for your work its much less helpful than if you view it as a time to learn how to critique other people’s work. Really articulating what is working or failing, at least for you, in someone’s work is immensely helpful for your own writing. I think most workshoppers learn more from critiquing others than having their work critiqued (though there is plenty of help in that. NOT, as you say, if you take it as a focus group to drive your work to the mean, but if you take it as an idea generating session where the majority of comments should be ignored but a handful will click with you in just the right way and let you see the piece differently.)
You can get this stuff on your own without an MFA. You could practice critiquing published work, you can find friends to read your work, you can save up money and set aside time on your own to write. No one NEEDS an MFA. But it can be quite helpful to some people.
I think the idea that a few semesters spent focusing on writing is denying you insane life experiences that the next great writers will have is fairly silly. We have, hopefully, many decades to live and a two years spent taking a handful of classes is hardly going to destroy your life experience. But more importantly, the much greater risk is in constantly talking in coffee shops about writing a book but never sitting down and doing it because work and life and everything else is always in the way. For some people, an MFA provides a nice space and community to actually do it.
“You’re providing the wrong sort of list. I’d like to know how many people with MFAs actually become exceptional, or even good, writers. That might tell us more about the failure rate.”
How man non-MFA writers become exceptional writers though?
Not that I disagree that the MFA system has grown too large and is putting out too many writers….
It’s a fine article Anelise, but no one should be getting an MFA unless they are either born rich or have a grant that covers the full tuition, room and board. If your MFA is not pre-paid for in such a fashion, you’re signing up for poverty and misery.
Don’t do it.
You don’t need to pay George Saunders or anyone else $100,000 for the right to write and read books. You can hold down a regular job in New York or Boston or Paris or whatever and go to all the readings you want. If you want to schmooze semi-famous writers from the position of a non-MFA student, you can. You just need to buy the semi-famous writer in question a glass of wine and a turkey club.
It’s not a question of whether or not an MFA will teach you craft, or make you a genius, or help you get published. Frankly, it will do none of those things with certainty. It will bankrupt you though. When you graduate you will only be qualified to teach first year comp and creative writing at a community college. You will not like this. When you realize that these gigs only pay $2,000 per class per semester, you will like it even less, especially when you need to pick up shifts waiting tables at Carrabba’s to pay your student loans.
Anelise– thanks for the response. A bit more on the “dithering” issue below.
Lincoln– we meet again. I was a commenter on your MFA piece and we discussed MFA programs and socially marginal writers.
I guess my point is that the reason I love to hear Lou Reed sing “Stephanie Says” is not because he has a great voice or has been well schooled in the craft of singing. It is because there is something in Lou Reed the individual that is endlessly intriguing. It just comes out in his work.
All art is, to some extent, this way. We are connecting with the individual behind the work, and it is her charisma that is carrying our interest. Granted, an MFA program can neither create nor destroy this charisma, but then what is the point?
Ok, this is a weird analogy, but I am reminded of a Tupac documentary I saw (was it Redemption or Biggie and Tupac?) where there is footage of Tupac in the studio. He is getting angry and ranting at the producers because they are dithering over beats and samples. He tells them something to the effect of “when I come here to rap, just hit record and let me go. Then when I leave, all you guys who love to stay up late and tweak the production can do your thing. But don’t waste my time when I come to the studio.” And Pac was right– let the editors dither over sentences. When the artist is in the studio, her job is to create. And Tupac’s fans would listen to him rap over a metronome.
I’m not advocating sloppy writing, but don’t lose the forest for the trees. Are MFA programs for the artist or for the producers who are going to stay up all night tweaking the beats?
You’re more likely to get your book published if you’ve been in a literary magazine and you’re more likely to get into a literary magazine if you have an MFA. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.
I actually have a photo on my cameraphone of two bins for incoming submissions in the last lit magazine office I was in. One is labelled “Submissions from published authors or MFAs from major programs” the other is much much larger and labelled “Other submissions”.
There are instructions telling the editors to make sure they read everything in the first bin.
Wheat and chaff, Michael. Wheat and chaff.
Lincoln– I’ve been thinking about your argument that the “primary function of an MFA program, for the writer, is exactly to provide a time, space, community and often money to help an aspiring writer…” It’s tough to argue with this, because if this is what MFA programs are doing, what could be the harm in that?
But I’m struck by the deep ambivalence in that endorsement. Would any other academic discipline make such a lukewarm claim about the purpose of its terminal degree?
When considered in light of John’s comment above, it is especially striking. Is that really the primary function of an MFA?
one thing that’s being slightly misrepresented here is that Jonathan Safran Foer and Zadie Smith both worked under the auspices of writers (Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, respectively) that was akin to some of the tutelage sought out in an MFA program. in some ways, better, perhaps.
I enjoyed the chart.
I’m struck by the argument in some of these comments that there are too many MFA programs and we’re producing too many writers. It’s pretty much omnipresent in these kinds of debates, and almost no one disagrees with it. But I think it’s really kind of a weird assumption.
The only reason it would be wrong for there to be so many degrees issued is if there are lots of people entering into these programs thinking it will pay for itself after they graduate. But I don’t think most people think that. I think most people want the community it affords, the built in audience, and the time. What exactly is wrong with people being passionate enough about an art to pursue it with their time and financial resources? If we want literature to be healthy, why wouldn’t we want more people pursuing MFAs, not less? Don’t they help support writers (the teachers) who otherwise wouldn’t have any way of putting food on their tables? Don’t many writing programs help people think in a different way that is, dare I say, healthy for society, as in they teach the ability to empathize with characters and write powerfully? I guess what I’m saying is, why look at it like a pissing contest? Would you rather have writers pursuing degrees in business and going off and writing copy for Halliburton and BP?
“MFA programs are like weight-loss programs. They promise great writers money and fame and the literary equivilent of hot sex, but everybody knows the best way to lose weight is to put down the fucking fork and go get some exercise.”
Pshaw, Michael!
I have an MFA from Iowa. No one promised us anything there except plenty of time for writing. Those of us who were able to use the time well did a lot more writing (i.e. got more practice) than they could have managed with day jobs, and those of us who didn’t drank a lot, threw anxious fits about whether we’d ever “make it” or be able to pay back our loans or get jobs or matter, and waited for someone to tell us we were good writers.
An MFA in writing is mostly useless once you have the degree. Time–to read, talk with other writers, learn from other writers, and practice–is what you get out of it.
Would any other academic discipline make such a lukewarm claim about the purpose of its terminal degree?
I think this question gets to an area of debate about the MFA–is it an academic discipline? I have one, and I’d say not necessarily. Some places treat it as one, or at least make it possible to be one, but I consider it a studio degree in the same vein as any other fine arts terminal degree. I got mine from the University of Arkansas, which is a 60 hour degree (if you come in with a BA) and limits the amount of time you can spend on workshop/form and theory/thesis, which means you spend a fair amount of time (roughly half when I was there) in literature classes, so I think mine falls more on the academic side of the MFA, at least when I’ve compared it to other MFA programs I’ve seen. But even then, I didn’t see it as an academic terminal degree in the same way I see the PhD in Literature.
So I suppose my counter-question would be, are we asking something of the MFA that it’s not meant to provide?
Zak–Is that true about the two boxes? I know I shouldn’t be shocked–but I am! I read for a few literary magazines–we were told not to look at the cover letters but we always did and it always affected the way I read the story. The framing makes all the difference maybe…like how Perkus Tooth in Chronic City rearranges articles from the New Yorker to divorce the text from its fancy font/format which we automatically associate with good writing. What’s good writing? Maybe we don’t even know anymore. This conversation would be different if everyone could look at those two boxes, no? And compare the two?
Do I want to go after an MFA? Not sure. But I do know that I love this essay.
i do all my writing ‘over a metronome.’
my fans like it better this way.
even when i dither.
yep.
i use to date a girl w/an mfa from nyu. she had seasonal affective disorder. i didn’t realize that was an acronym for sad. not until she told me about her illness while bawling. really.
qualitatively unqualified.
I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Zak’s story is true. I’d like to know which magazine it is, though, so I can avoid sending there, because I don’t trust the editorial judgment of anyone who make that kind of nonsense division.
As we know that running a school is just like running a business, we would’t be surprised with why they create more MFA programs. “TO” or “Not to” MFA works like making a choice of whether or not you want to buy that pair of new designed sneakers with your one week hard work earnings. It involves a vast risk-taking which paralells as investing the stock market or gambling. However, people who pursue the degree are uniquely different from the regular business men. They are more sensitive, observant, smart, philosophic, humane… and you name it. All the precious qualities a human has are the motivation of why writers write. Just embrace these best humanity and keep writing. Life itself is a struggle. To or not to MFA is, of course, a necessary struggle for a serious writer. My motto is “No regret”!
Well-done, Anelise. An MFA shouldn’t hurt, and might help. One of the more fascinating pieces I’ve read on MFA programs is by Briggs Seekins, a Syracuse grad, thus you may have heard of him. Anyway, in the following article at Cosmoetica he tells about attending the program there:
“In May of 1995 I accepted a three-year University Fellowship from Syracuse University, to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. I was a combat veteran of the Gulf War and I had used the Army College Fund to earn a BA in Philosophy. I was a working class kid who had resolved to avoid working for as long as possible. And now, for the next three years, I would be paid a little over ten thousand dollars a year to write poetry and to take classes in prosody and literary history. I felt like I had won the fucking lottery…”
It’s a great piece, a little cynical, and worth a look – http://www.cosmoetica.com/D4-BS1.htm
Hi Aaron,
Nice to see you again. You know, I think you and I look for a lot of the same things in literature and I’ve actually been working on an essay about how it is the eccentricities and flaws of writers that make them great. However, as for MFAs….
“But I’m struck by the deep ambivalence in that endorsement. Would any other academic discipline make such a lukewarm claim about the purpose of its terminal degree?”
I think, perhaps, other art programs would make similar claims. You mention John’s comments, but most MFAs these days offer students funding (although my program had weak funding when I went there) so that’s simply another argument in there favor. Time, money and community for a two to three year period.
If I have a deep ambivalence it is because of this:
MFA programs are really different and different people will react to them in very different ways.
My own program was very large (~35 fiction students a year), very rigorous (you took 1 workshop and 3 other classes a semester), very encouraging of aesthetic diversity, and as I said had bad funding. Many other programs are very tiny, require only 1-2 classes a semester and may have a very narrow aesthetic that teachers push.
I personally had a fantastic MFA experience. I had great teachers like Sam Lipsyte and Ben Marcus, learned lots of things in lectures and craft classes(as I’ve said, we took three times as many of those as workshops), made lots of great friends who are now my constant writing advisors, etc. In my workshops we had people writing hard sci-fi novels, ornate Southern gothic stories, enigmatic languagey short shorts, melancholy minimalism and many other things. My teachers definitely pushed us to be unique and different and did not in any way try to smooth out all the rough edges and become workshop clones.
That said, that is just my experience. I have friends who went to other programs, even top ranked ones, who hated them and dropped out. I know people in my own program who had different teachers and felt quite differently that I did about workshops.
So I don’t feel ambivalent about my own experience, but I’m not going to toot the horn for all programs when they are can be so different. You know what I mean? Similarly, I’m positive many people would hate the program I went through and love other programs that would have stifled me. And I know many writers would hate ANY MFA program and should just avoid them (in the same way that we probably all knew people in high school who clearly were going to hate college and should have never gone…except a college degree is much more essential in modern America than an MFA is for writers.)
MFA programs are useless.
Reading all these subsequent posts makes me feel like a crazy person. All you rich people who want an MFA, carry on. Enjoy yourselves. Pay money to sit in all the circles you want and critique your heads off. Send your short stories off to the Antioch review or where ever, secure in the knowledge that your little tale will go in the good pile because you got your low-residency MFA from Warren Wilson. Enjoy that $120 you earn when your story is published.
The rest of you, the ones with ~$40,000 in loans from undergrad, stop right where you are. Back away from the MFA application. Learn a trade, “sell out” to a corporate master, move to an inexpensive but pleasant city. Set up a desk in a clean, dry well-lit place and start writing.
Going to an MFA program is a financial investment in an education that emphatically does not offer a financial return. That’s fine if you’ve got money to spare, but if you don’t have that money, it’s absolutely moronic. It’s as if you decided to spend a hundred thousand dollars on baseball lessons, with the expectation that such an education would land you the job as 3rd baseman for the Red Sox. Of course you won’t become the Red Sox 3rd baseman.
You will however have a huge debt that cannot be dissolved by filing for bankruptcy.
A lifetime of debt will cripple you emotionally. This isn’t dostoyevski shit, where debt-collecting goons threaten you and you’re be so inspired by the fear that you hire a girl or boy from the local secretarial school to transcribe your creative output as fast as you can utter it.
No, this is grinding, dull poverty.
The feeling of being trapped by debt for no good reason makes you feel stupid and helpless. You will find yourself sitting in Cafe Grumpy, 33 years old, and unable to afford another cup of coffee. Also your electric bill will be past due, your cell phone is shut off and the girl you’ve been dating looks at you with a sad gaze that tells you she’s going to dump you soon. For being a loser. You will have to call your retired parents to borrow eleven hundred dollars. They will sigh and tell you they can’t really spare it, but they’ll scrape it together and you will feel like an asshole. In the back of your mind you’ll realize that with the loan default on your record, you can’t buy a house, get a loan on a car, or hang onto a credit card.
Don’t do it. You are smarter than that.
John, I’m more than $70K in debt from my MFA, 31 years old, and I’m not wealthy. I’m also very, very happy I did the program. Before I entered the program, I had a dull crippling job, and I was near-suicidal. I’m a much better person now for leaving all that. There is this thing called IBR, in which you only have to pay less than 10% of your income on student loans, no matter how far in debt you are. And if you don’t make a lot of money, it’s even less than that. If you work for a nonprofit, they forgive whatever debt is remaining after ten years (25 if you work for a for profit). It’s not a “lifetime of crippling debt” if you’re smart about it. And, depending on the MFA, it can be more than worth it for non-economic reasons.
What John doesn’t mention is that it’s possible, bordering on easy, to get an MFA without spending tens of thousands of dollars a year. Avoid the debt if you can, and don’t go to a program that isn’t fully-funded. And while John is correct that student loan debt can’t be dissolved by filing for bankruptcy, he doesn’t mention that there are a number of federal programs which will allow for deferral, forbearance, and ultimately, forgiveness of unpaid balances on student loans depending on how much you’re earning and whether or not you’re in the private sector. I’m not recommending student loan debt–I’m no fan of mine–but it’s not necessarily as crippling as John makes it out to be in his comment.
But here’s the most important thing in my book. Be realistic about job prospects in academia after you finish your degree. The current tight market in CW has been going on for more than a decade, and it’s not going to loosen up any time soon. John’s right to a point when he says that the degree itself does not offer a financial return. No degree does that on its own, though some offer an easier path to financial success than others. You’ll have to spin an MFA a bit more than you might some other degree if you’re trying to move into some other field.
Lincoln– Really interesting points. And I think you are right; the bottom line is that if the MFA program was good for you as a writer, then case closed, it is a good thing (at least for you). I wouldn’t argue against your personal experience. I think John’s comments about the economic impact of going into debt for an MFA are well-taken, but one can’t really allow money to enter into the conversation when discussing the journey toward becoming a writer. If we are going to give weight to financial concerns, I think we can agree that choosing to be a writer is not usually the best route.
But the old saw that “Tolstoy could not have written War and Peace as a homework assignment” sort of rings true. Can we really expect genius to come out of any institutional setting? If Hemingway had enrolled in an MFA program rather than fighting in the Spanish civil war and then living as an expat in Paris, would he still have created his best work?
This is great.
I’ve taken part in this dialogue for a while, and have finally realized, when it comes down to it, all I really have to say is this: I stopped writing completely for a year when I was getting my MFA. I haven’t stopped writing for more than a few weeks at a time since getting my MFA. And I’m not sure if one would’ve happened without the other, and vice versa. In other words: it’s complicated, I think, for anyone.
Aaron,
I don’t understand why it has to be an either/or situation. Why couldn’t a person serve in the military and then, after coming home, enroll in an MFA program so as to better write about his or her experiences? I didn’t start my MFA until I was 30, and I was hardly the youngest person in my class. In fact, it was rare for my school (at the time) to enroll people who’d come straight out of a Bachelors program.
I totally don’t understand the MFA world in writing or in arts (though I do have a master’s degree in engineering). But I’ve always fantasized that an MFA program would be a great way to spend a couple of years focusing on my art in an environment where I could get feedback from other artists, guidance from art instructors. After that, there are no guarantees…..
The forbearance programs merely delay payment on loans. The loans earn interest all the while. The Income Based Repayment programs have loopholes and exceptions that basically ensure that you will be excluded from the more generous terms of the program unless you make it your job to comply with the arcane terms of the program. Is that how you want to spend middle age? Worrying if you can switch jobs without suddenly re-incurring responsibility for the full principle of your near-forgotten loan?
If my tone and baseball lesson analogy have implied that I don’t think literature is a worthwhile pursuit, I’m sorry. It is. Literature is important. But I think people need to be fully aware of the massive financial implications of the decision to attend any grad school, but especially a fine arts grad school.
Brian Spears says that it is easy to acquire an MFA without incurring debt. I don’t believe that this is true. Universities fund graduate students whose presence generates income for the University. Science grad students do research that garners government and industry grants, so they are often funded at legitimate schools. Students who attend professional schools–medical and law school–can sometimes acquire significant funding because these degrees lead to highly paid professions. It is in the interest of the university to front these students money because it inspires loyalty and generosity later on in life. As alumni, these students give money back to the university.
MFA programs don’t yield well-paid grads. Ever. If you did a statistical analysis of the number of MFA grads who wind up as published authors earning a middle-class income vs those who don’t, the former group would be so small as to be insignificant. Of the writers on the 20 under 40 list above, I’d venture to say that only 5 of them earn enough money from their writing to support themselves. The others may make a somewhat decent living when all their odd-job academic income streams are combined, but these people are the top of the heap. It’s not a very tall heap. So why would schools front a bunch of tuition money to these grad students? They don’t. I know that there are schools, Brown and others, which offer fully funded graduate fellowships for creative writers, but those cases are the exception. The rule is that MFA programs generate income for the school through tuition paid by students.
If you know this and understand it, and still want to attend an MFA program, that’s great. Go for it.
John,
All I can say in response to your statements about the IBR program is that you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re in the ten year program and you change jobs so you’re no longer eligible, you get switched into the twenty-five year program. Your payments are still based on your income, and they’re recalculated every year no matter what job you’re doing. You don’t have to be a genius to figure this stuff out. Again, all that changes is the length of the term. If you still owe after twenty-five years, you’re forgiven the balance.
As far as one’s ability to get an MFA without incurring debt, I can point to about half the people I did my MFA with as examples. Their tuition was covered by their assistantships, they made about 9 grand a year (back in 1999) for teaching and most got an additional 3 grand in fellowship money. They lived in a small town where a person could get by making that kind of money. They didn’t live extravagantly but they got by. And that’s possible to this day, as long as you find 1) a program that fully funds you and 2) find it in a place where you can leave cheaply. Well, and 3) you’re willing to live that cheaply. And my school wasn’t an aberration–the MFA at the school where I’m employed offers full-funding, and it’s nowhere near a major program.
Brian– I don’t think it is either/or. Attending an MFA program for two years doesn’t preclude a rich life full of incredible experiences. But the question is not “do MFA programs destroy writers?” the question is “do MFA programs create better writers?” Because if they don’t improve your writing, what is the point? And my question about Hemingway is, would an MFA program have improved his writing? Would it have improved his writing more than the life he led instead? If you think the answer is no, then why should an ambitious young writer enroll in an MFA program?
I get the “time, space and community” argument, but must one pay tuition for the privilege? To stick with my Hemingway example, Hemingway lived and wrote in Paris, ate lunch with F. Scott Fitzgerald and discussed modernism with Gertrude Stein, and he didn’t pay a dime in tuition for the privilege. Surely there are still artistic communities around the world outside of academia. My guess is that you could move to San Francisco, start showing up for all the Rumpus-related events, and pretty soon you would be a member of a vibrant writing community.
And don’t tell me that being in an MFA program is valuable because it forces people to write. If you would not be motivated to write without an MFA program, then you might want to reconsider your decision to become a writer.
If you are willing to go a step further and allow that the stultifying effects of academia could, in theory, diminish some part of a writer’s creative impulse, then the argument against MFAs becomes more urgent. I’m not saying this is the case at your MFA program or any MFA program in particular, but I guarantee that somewhere there is a writing teacher passionately encouraging her students to write just like her. And if a young James Joyce is sitting in her class, he may seriously be considering whether writing Ulysses is such a good idea.
Brian, when you’re transferred to the 25 year program, you’re on the hook for the full principle with interest accrued over 25 years. That’s not a good deal for the borrower. It’s like buying a car with a 72 month repayment term.
Good luck with knowing what you’re talking about.
Aaron,
Your question is “do MFA programs create better writers?†The only possible answer, to my mind is, they can. Do they in every case? Of course not, but we shouldn’t expect a 100% success rate. We don’t in any other area, after all. Being in an MFA program improved my writing-all you have to do is go back and look at the poetry I wrote when I was an undergrad (because some of it was published) and compare it to what I’m publishing now and you’ll see what I mean. It wasn’t just the workshops either–it was the lit classes which introduced me to a lot of people I’d never even heard of before which opened my eyes to new ways of expression and of looking at the world. Maybe you can find that on your own–all I know is that I hadn’t, and didn’t until I had a program leading me in those directions.
And I’ve improved even more in the 7 years since I’ve been out of the program, read more widely, written more experimentally, but I doubt that I’d be where I am now without that program. It’s not that the program answered questions for me–it’s that the program taught me what questions to ask in the first place.
One last thing. I think it’s reductive at best to talk about “the stultifying effects of academia.” Academia is only as stultifying as you allow it to be. To suggest that it’s the problem rather than the writer who’s not challenging him or herself is lazy thinking to my mind.
John,
No you’re not. It’s pretty clearly spelled out. Here’s the link: http://www.ibrinfo.org/faq.vp.html#_How_does_loan
Brian– I don’t doubt that your writing has improved since undergrad. But you have matured and experienced new things that have also played a role in your growth as a writer. My writing improved dramatically between the ages of 10 and 20, and I didn’t even attend an MFA program!
The question is, what would you be writing if you had taken that tuition and money and traveled the globe. Or taken a job with a newspaper covering aid efforts in Darfur. We will never know. But it’s a logical fallacy to assume that the MFA program dramatically improved your writing.
Don’t get me wrong– I’m not contradicting your claim necessarily or arguing against what you say is your experience. If you say an MFA program was a great benefit to your writing, then I believe you. But I’m not convinced it was the best possible thing for you to do.
As for academia, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But you can’t really say the problem is lazy thinking. If I told you that joining a cult and praying to the leader all day was having a stultifying effect on my writing, would you tell me that was just my lazy thinking? This is an extreme example, but my point is that your environment can have an impact on your ability to create art. Some would say that the academic environment can be stultifying.
@Anelise @Brian
It’s true. Why would I bother to make that up? I’m not psychotic.
Here are the facts:
-MFAs increase your chances of getting published.
-MFAs increase your chances of sleeping with people on the strength of your writing talent alone (Since everyone in the class is forced to read you). This is no small thing for people of a certain turn of mind.
-MFAs don’t make people better writers, but having 20 hours a week to do nothing but write and talk about writing does. So if you don’t have an MFA, find another way to do that.
“wheat and not the shaft”
sheaf? chaff? or is this some po-mo thing only an MFA student could fathom?
(I’m giggling, honest. Not being mean. It’s just kinda funny.)
Aaron,
What’s lazy, I think, is simply assuming that academia is the problem with writing, and that’s what most of these “the MFA sucks” articles reduce to. Of course, I’m coming from a position questioning the idea that there’s a problem with the state of writing in the first place, so maybe there’s no way to reconcile that part of the discussion. But it feels to me like the people who are pointing the finger at academia in general are just looking for a scapegoat, and academia’s handy.
Maybe you missed the earlier part where I mentioned that I didn’t pay tuition to go to my MFA program. My options weren’t between traveling the world and going to an MFA. They were between trying to do something with my BA (or continue waiting tables and slinging drinks) and going to a grad school which covered my tuition and paid me a salary while learning more about my art. And taking a job with a newspaper is a lot easier said than done, and has been for quite some time. So let me say this more forcefully–I don’t think anyone should pay tuition to attend an MFA program unless they just want to and have the money. But most programs–and I’d have to double check the data before I said this definitively–offer to cover your tuition and pay you a small stipend besides if you’re a student in their program.
As to your last point, if the academic environment is stultifying to you, then by all means avoid it. But don’t extend that argument to assume that the academic environment is a problem in general, or is a problem for everyone. For some people it works–isn’t that enough to justify the existence of the MFA as an academic program?
John: you are simply wrong that it is impossible or even hard to get an MFA without going into debt. Tons of MFA programs are free and give you a stipend (normally for TAing classes or working on a literary journal). This kind of information is available online, so I don’t get the point of just saying you think it can’t be true without actually doing a few minutes of google work to see if you are right.
@John, what Brian said.
@Brian Sadly, I don’t think most MFA programs have adequate funding. I had a little, but not enough. In fact, I think most don’t. A lot of the more prestigious ones do, but even a lot of those don’t. That’s why I did partial residency, so I could work. Of course, then the financial system collapsed and I couldn’t work, so my plan fell through and I was unemployed for a long time, and now I’m in debt. But at least I had a lot more time to write.
Either way, when I was applying three or four years ago, I feel like I read that maybe 10 or 20% had much funding, and usually it was competitive within that program, so those programs were considerably more cutthroat than other ones (a major turn off for me, at least). Also, as a mid-career changer who didn’t even study lit in undergrad, I didn’t have a chance in hell to get into the ones that did have funding. But I knew that writing was what I needed to do for me, whether or not anyone ever read it, and an MFA was a way to force myself to do that. I really don’t think I was a sucker for paying for it. I mean, it really did make my life better. And it’s not like the federal government would give me a student loan to travel the world, as Aaron suggests.
I guess my point is that a good MFA isn’t just a writing degree or a professional degree. At it’s best, it can transform your life and help you get on a better track. Not “therapy,” as I’m sure many of you are thinking, but a way for people in other walks of life to transform the way they think about the world. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for people who studied creative writing in undergrad and want to go straight to MFA after. I think that is kind of dumb, and I especially wouldn’t pay for that. But for someone who’s been in the world, who’s written their whole life but never studied it or been surrounded by people who are interested in it, it can be a lifechanging experience, and well worth the money.
Aaron:
“But it’s a logical fallacy to assume that the MFA program dramatically improved your writing.”
How is it a “logical fallacy”? Or at least anymore than claiming that the MFA can’t possible really improve someone’s writing.
Personally I find the “travel the globe” type arguments to be fairly silly. As Flannery O’Connor said, anyone who survived childhood has more than enough material to draw on as a writer. Yes, there are some writers who had crazy unique life experiences that helped their writing, but there are plenty of others who had pretty darn normal lives and were utter geniuses. Having wacky jobs or visiting foreign countries has never been a requirement of writing. And, as Brian says, it is more than possible to do all of that stuff AND attend a few workshops.
“But the old saw that “Tolstoy could not have written War and Peace as a homework assignment†sort of rings true. Can we really expect genius to come out of any institutional setting? If Hemingway had enrolled in an MFA program rather than fighting in the Spanish civil war and then living as an expat in Paris, would he still have created his best work?”
Well, Frankenstein was written as a homework assignment of sorts and people seem to like that. The Oulipo writers wrote plenty of great work out of types of assignments. Of course, you may say those aren’t “institutional” settings, but to the question “can we expect genius to come out of [an MFA program]?” I think the obvious answer is yes. Flannery O’Connor, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Denis Johnson… I think there are plenty of works of genius that have been produced by people who attended MFA programs.
Would these people have been geniuses without MFAs or MAs? I think so, but clearly MFA writers have produced great work.
Basically I think there are some things that really help most (though not all) writers: Mentors, friendships and work exchanges with other talented young writers, supportive artistic communities, close analysis of texts, and time (and hopefully money) to write. All of those things can be had without an MFA. Absolutely. But the MFA is one way to get them.
To continue that lost thought, I feel like most of these arguments (including this one) involve people saying you can get everything from an MFA program on your own. You can move to a city with a vibrant literary culture. You can seek out writing groups or pay to take workshops and writing classes outside of a university setting. You can work a job and save money to have time to write. etc. etc.
And that’s all true. But it sounds like it would take more effort and perhaps more money to get the same results as an MFA program, so I don’t quite get the argument. Some writers will thrive in the MFA environment, some while hate it. If it works for you, cool. If not, cool.
Lincoln:
I challenge you on the term “tons.” Earning a few grand for TAing undergrads who pay $52,000 a year is not a good deal, and it’s not enough money to support oneself. For the vast majority of students debt fills in the gaps. Lots of debt.
Brian,
I think you should dig into the contract of the loan.
If at any point during 25 years you come into money, you’re on the hook. If you marry someone who makes real money, you’re gonna pay (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/your-money/04money.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=student%20loans%20marriage&st=cse). If you win the lottery, you’re gonna pay. If your parents die and leave you money, you pay. If you get hit by a city bus and collect a settlement, you pay. If you decide 15 years into the term of the loan that you need to support a family, so you go out and get a higher earning job that bears absolutely no relation to your MFA, you’re still going to pay.
But this is exactly what I meant in my earlier posting, if you want to make it your goal to stay under the income limits and within the terms of the deferment/forbearance/IBR programs for a QUARTER OF A CENTURY (!), awesome. You’ve taken a vow of poverty. Enjoy. But the lenders will do whatever they can to ensure that they get their money plus interest. That is an obvious fact in America. I think it’s grossly irresponsible, and frankly childish, to suggest that there’s “tons” of free money available for MFA students.
Again, I’m not taking issue with the virtues of literary pursuits or academia. But students need to consider the money. If I dissuade one kid from going broke in exchange for the dubious prospect of getting a poem into The Paris Review, I’m happy.
But John, I don’t get your logic. Of course you should pay if you have the money. If you win the lottery or get a really good job or come across a lot of money, what’s wrong with paying off your debts? With the possible exception of getting hit by a bus, it’s not like you’re living in poverty then, right? And if you’re not going to do things in life because you’re worried about getting hit by a bus, I just can’t help you.
Why ask god to forbid “high cultural pluralists”? Fatwas instead?
Seth,
I think it’s fine to pay your loans. What I’m arguing with is Brian’s contention that we live in a country where there are legitimate student loan forgiveness programs for MFA holders. There are not. You will repay the loan, plus interest and fees, even when you think you can’t possibly afford it.
But it sounds like what this is is that you only have to repay the loans if you can afford it. That doesn’t mean it might not suck to pay it, but it’s not like anyone’s gonna starve. They just might not be able to afford that new Prius, or, God forbid, they might have to cook at home more, or get a second hand stroller. And yes, I agree there should be much better programs and funding for education of all types in this country. But if you feel like you’re really going to get something by going to an MFA, as I did, then the fact that you’ll have to pay it back if you do have the money doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing.
John:
I said tons of programs are free or even give you a stipend, I didn’t say they give you tons of money. I know people who lived off their stipends. Whether it is a good deal to make a few thousand to teach classes and attend an mfa for free is a matter of opinion though.
I published maybe 30 short stories and 5 books before I got an MFA. Hundreds of feature stories and book reviews, too. I now direct an MFA program. So, I feel like I qualify as an expert here on both sides of the fence, so let me parse my words as accurately as I possibly can: Who the fuck cares? Anyone think a Master’s degree in Philosophy is going to get you a job, either? Either you feel like you need two years of concentrated study or you don’t. Either you want it at a university of your don’t. Either you get it for free or you go 30K in debt or you just read a bunch of books at home and learn to write that way. Fine. Really. Just be happy people still read and write at all, I say. Writers often needs mentors just like plumbers do and the best way to find those mentors is often in the classroom, particularly if you live somewhere where the opportunity to interact with literature is not readily available Sometimes, you just read a great book and it sends you on your way. Do you need an MFA? No, no one NEEDS one. But no one NEEDS a degree in anything artistic, but god knows it helps some people find their way.
The executive summary:
An MFA is a financial investment in a degree that offers no financial return. It may have other virtues, but it won’t help you earn money. It will probably put you in debt. Lots of debt that cannot be dissolved by bankruptcy. Would-be MFA students should be made aware of these facts. They should also be made aware of the likelihood that with the probable exceptions of Ferris, Foer, Krauss, Packer, and Shteyngart, everyone on the New Yorker list above has to have some kind of a day job.
I think it was Sydney Harris who said, “The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.” We are treating the MFA (and much of education frankly) like a Return On Investment statement. And I guess if that’s how you approach your writing, an MFA is probably a pretty raw deal as many people above have stated. I am about $40k in debt from my program which is around the price of a nicely loaded minivan (forgive my analogy, I’m a mom and was a non-traditional student). Is my mind a more pleasant place to be since I went to graduate school? Hell yeah. Did I meet people I love who will be my lifelong friends? Yes. Did I become a better writer… yes, but I also became a better reader.
I think so MUCH of this depends on the program you choose.
We spend money on health care, coffee, our pets, Rumpus t-shirts, books, etc. etc. and we don’t think it’s worth it to spend it on our art? I wrote before I went to my program. But my program helped me develop my strengths and also made me realize that there IS something passed from generation to generation of writers and while MOST of it can be passed via fierce reading and fierce writing, not ALL of it can. And that is one of the things the MFA is good for.
As someone planning on applying to MFA programs for the first time this year, I spend way too much time reading these types of articles when I’m supposed to be working.
I think most of these opinions and comments are good and valid, and what it comes down to is not the MFA as a degree or even the specific program. It’s the writer and that writer’s expectations if they go into a program.
I don’t think an MFA program is going to unlock some magical genius that was previously untapped, but I do think that a good writer can use an MFA program to his or her advantage if they approach it with the right mindset. If that mindset is “learning how to write” then sure, that writer will probably end up learning “how to write like my teacher and classmates.” If the mindset is “I’m going to explore how to better connect with people through my writing” then how can that not help a writer?
Also, if someone is a “genius,” and they allow an MFA program to stifle and soften that, are they really a “genius” in the first place?
If you’re writing anything as a return-on-investment proposition, I hope it contains guns, supernatural forces, and/or insider information on political contests. Otherwise, even thinking of writing or a writer’s education in terms of economic yield is absurdly beside the point. I mean, just ridiculous.
Don’t have the money to get an MFA, but want one? Then choose only to apply to programs that offer funding (of which there are very, very many), polish the hell out of your writing sample, and have a decent undergrad GPA and great rec letters. Completely avoidable problem solved.
Victoria,
If we used a commenting system here that allowed for liking a comment, I’d like the hell out of yours.
Bless you, Tod. My thoughts exactly.
from Telaina:
“I think it was Sydney Harris who said, “The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.†…Is my mind a more pleasant place to be since I went to graduate school? Hell yeah. Did I meet people I love who will be my lifelong friends? Yes. Did I become a better writer… yes, but I also became a better reader.”
I love that. I gave up teaching after 7+ years, after getting an MFA (studio art, visual art, whatever – not writing) and have been reading these discussions with curiosity about how writers make sense of their MFA experience. Many of my friends are surprised that I don’t want to teach anymore. It is a useful side benefit to an MFA, for visual artists, and I might go back to it someday. But I continue to be fairly concerned about the creative worlds’ subservience to the academic mode, and right now I am better able to keep a sustainable studio practice while working a 9-to-5 job.
It’s cool if you don’t need an MFA program to get to a sustainable practice. Like Telaina, it was a life-changer for me. But more like a tilled field than a harvest.
Not just what is an MFA for, but what is writing “for”? What is making “for”?
The MFA shows you new ways to write. It shows you bad writing and good writing. It exposes you to parts of a whole — the literary world as part of the world, and, more closely, a small grain of the larger literary world comprised of the writers who teach in your program and the writers who attend.
It does not promise you anything — nor does anything else on the planet. It’s just a period of time which you pay for — either in dollars, in teaching, or in sacrificing another opportunity — and at the end of it, you receive a degree. What you do with that degree is your business.
I’ve worked with people who hold J.D.’s, PhD’s, MBAs, and diving certifications. None of those titles promise anything. The MFA is a terminal degree in that you can — if you you apply yourself, make the right choices, and arrive at the right place at the right time — bridge it into a professional career. An MFA is not a promise that you will publish a book, just like a J.D. is not a promise that you will open a private practice or join the American College of Trial Lawyers.
It is the responsibility of the committee choosing from an applicant pool to pay attention to the personal statements of writers and weed out those who seem so disillusioned as to think that studying with a particular writer is going to ensure them success in the writing industry or any industry. Similarly, it is the responsibility of the applicant to consider, thoughtfully, their intentions and expectations of an MFA program before applying and express those intentions in the personal statement.
I attended the University of Miami. I am a better writer than I was at the time that I entered my program. I can’t say that I’m worse off, in any way, for having the experience of two years of writing in a new city, fully funded, with a group of interesting and talented people of various personality types, perspectives, and projects.
Every single day was not fun. There were moments when I felt stuck, disenchanted, and utterly confused. I haven’t won any major prizes. But I can find my way into many novels, poems, and pieces of literature that I could have never even cracked before studying at UM, and that gives me access to more ideas and more possibilities as a human being. I have teaching and tutoring experience, experience with a literary journal, graphic design, mass observation, collaboration, and the creation of a manuscript. I have experience filing grievances within the university system. I have experience handling problem students, grade disputes, plagiarism. I have experience sharing genuine enthusiasm and passion for the page, the sentence, and the line. I have put out fires. I have started some. Experience, experience, experience.
My advice to a writer with the goal of publishing a book would be this: Spend less time researching and applying to programs and more time solidifying the plans for your book project before entering a program.
To the writer with the goal of having a dynamic experience and a chance at a higher level of education, my advice is: write your personal statement with honesty, find a program with the best funding you can get, and try to have as much varied experience as possible once you get in.
To the young person who has no clue what to do with their life and thinks the MFA might be a good place to hang out for a while: Get a job, man. The American economy needs your working hands right now. Scrub some dishes, wait some tables, help people move. When you’ve worked and you know you want to focus and write — apply to grad school, and use the time wisely.
$.02
-Megan
Just to clarify, given the comments I didn’t read til later about blaming or not blaming academia:
I don’t think an academic environment is inherently stultifying. It may be that there is more overlap between how writer-readers read and study literature and how academics read and study literature. I have found that artists in general approach looking at art and studying art history much differently, with different aims, than art historians.
I also think that a creative sensibility is often enlivening to an academic discourse. And the reverse is true, to a large extent — that a university environment offers a great deal for a writer or an artist, in exposure, in resources, dialogue with other disciplines.
It sometimes seems that artists and writers internalize the critical stance of studying writing or studying art, or even sociology, philosophy or the study of history, without transforming the other discipline’s methodology sufficiently into something useful for the practice of making, or even recognizing that the needs/assumptions/practices of rational, logical, “scientific” inquiry (the underpinning of most academic disciplines and the coat that the rest of them put on to stay in the club) are different than the needs/assumptions/practices of creative work.
Maybe this is just my windmill to tilt at. I just think creative work *is* different and that claiming that is hard in western society, where things must be weighed in gold or logic or both. I guess you could cast this as just a craft argument, but I think it is more than that. If MFAs of any sort were not embedded in academia, they would look different and I think it’s worth thinking about how.
@anelise i love your essay!!
it’s strange to me how inclined we are to measure the value, or lack thereof, of an MFA. it seems that the value of an MFA is defined entirely by the individual–maybe in the same way a work of art is revered by one person and no big deal to another. who’s to say what an MFA will or won’t do for a person? who’s to say that what one experiences in a program won’t lead to better writing? or worse? i mean, 600 soldiers go to war, and maybe 100 come back with PTSD. that doesn’t mean that the other 500 didn’t experience anything traumatic.
that’s probably not the best analogy, but what I’m trying to get at is that 20 writers may enter an MFA program and maybe only 4 will ever be “successful†(meaning, widely published? financially secure? recognized for artistic genius?). but that doesn’t mean the other 16 didn’t gain anything that bears directly on their ability to create art that truly matters to someone.
the idea that there should be some kind of guaranteed, demonstrable, recognized improvement in one’s writing to justify an MFA is demoralizing.
and improvement? by whose standards?
Great post, great discussion.
Also: what Tod Goldberg said.
I’m not the other John, but I agree with him.
The mfa might just be one of the best examples of our lack of comprehension of exponential growth. Fundamentally, paying for an mfa is evidence of a lack of understanding of what 50,000 dollars of entirely unsecured debt means.
These argumentsare interesting, i think, but simple. Mfas for which students pay zero pennies make wonderful sense. The more pennies paid, the less sense they make. Most mfa students are paying a fuck load of pennies, and a large number of mfa programs — those that don’t offer full funding — are preying on writers who lack an understanding of money, lack an understanding of the job market for teaching, lack an understanding of publishing economics, or a combination of these. The truth is, a professor who is looking out for her students will refuse to teach unfunded students and work in some capacity in which lives are not being financially wrecked. Professors may have some moral obligation to steer students away from humanities graduate degrees. I argued against a freshman composition student switching from marketing to creative writing while she was in my class. I asked her, “are you wealthy or enormously well connected?” she was a single mother, 22 years old. I did my best. She still switched, but my conscience is clear.
Frankly, every time I hear an mfa student defending their debt and their program and waving their chapbook or their lit publication, I feel like I’m watching a polygamist child defend The Principle. Odd metaphor, but I live in Utah. I have no doubt it seems ok from where they stand, but they lack the capacity, for whatever reason, to make a rational decision about whether the mfa is worth it. How do we know? They enrolled without funding, fully aware of the costs. It’s like a black Jack player who just lost forty grand, but he’s explaining to his friends that he had a hell of a time playing. Hopefully he doesn’t have compounding interest on that forty grand.
An analogy was offered several comments ago that highlights the lack of logic so often prevalent in these discussions. Unfortunately, it was given by megan, who appears to have been exactly what an mfa candidate should be: funded. I’m not trying to be rude and I hope I don’t offend her.
“An MFA is not a promise that you will publish a book, just like a J.D. is not a promise that you will open a private practice or join the American College of Trial Lawyers.”
It is important to understand that this is a false analogy. The thing that an mfa is not a promise of (a book) bears almost so resemblance to the thing that a jd is not a promise of (a high paying job). The analogy is clearly an attempt at relating the respective lack of professional promise in these degrees, but it misses the mark massively. Not opening a private practice is a lack that can be made up for by any number of jobs a jd might actively qualify the degree holder to, like working for a firm, etc. Not publishing book is a lack that can not be made up for by any job the mfa might qualify the degree holder for. A book is close to a prerequisite for an mfa qualifying job, if we define job as something that pays enough to live on and pay loans back. Private practices are one of many options for students of law.
Of course, the biggest problem with the analogy is that the two failed goals – private practice/trial law and book publication – also bear no resemblance in regard to the argument at hand, which is professional promise. The former is a profession and paycheck. The latter is a flammable object potentially worth a 2$ royalty for the writer.
To say that the mfa promises nothing is to completely misrepresent reality. The word promise is troubling. We humans tend to operate with the assumption that we won’t be exploited, and the defense given by exploiters that the exploited are alone responsible for their failure to protect themselves — you know, if you’d read your contract, we didn’t promise anything, I’m sorry the salesman misspoke, it would appear you misunderstood, it seems there was some miscommunication, you can see there is no guarantee on the box — Someone should analyze mfa advertisements and report on what exactly a degree that promises nothing is spending money advertising.
I’m an MA student, and i love my program. I’m funded. And I plan to apply to some mfas, but only fully funded ones.
Brian, we can link comments.
@John Charles Gilmore, that is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard. You’re really trying to talk people out of creative writing? I can’t tell if that means that you think too highly of money or think that what you’re doing is a racket. Either way, really? You’re going to talk people out of taking creative writing, and that’s what you do? And then you probably wonder why people dismiss our field? It’s my opinion that we could use a hell of a lot more 22 year old single mothers writing, because if I have to read one more book about how hard it is to be rich I might have to stab myself in the face.
@John Charles Gilmore:
Actually, an MFA can qualify one for a wide array of jobs: copyediting, copywriting, teaching comp, tutoring, working entry level in publishing, freelance journalism… Whether these are well-paying, enjoyable, satisfying, well, that’s a different thread!
The tenure-track job is probably the most ideal of the jobs one could theoretically be qualified for, but it’s by no means the only.
That said, one’s job prospects should definitely be on the lower end of priorities when deciding whether or not one wants to pursue an MFA. It’s nice to know that there are writing-related jobs to be had, even if they’re low-paying and totally unglamorous, because it means that, should one choose that path, it’s available. You could also work in a restaurant, or a bar, or a coffee shop, or wherever. The most important thing is that you are sustaining yourself financially (and psychologically) in order to write. It goes the same for whether or not you choose to attend an MFA — the most important thing is to equip yourself with tools and knowledge and abilities to put yourself in position to have the best chance to create the thing you want to create. Whether that’s at an MFA program, or not, is up to the writer.
Loved this piece and the healthy debate. As a writer with no MFA (whose BA is, frankly, sketchy) I’d say: 1. What writer wouldn’t want to study and hone craft? 2. And what smart student, fed great books, which are so often reactions to stifling systems, to group-think and conformity, wouldn’t develop a healthy resentment toward such a seemingly hierarchical system? (You want to talk cliche? Half-a-dozen Iowans on the New Yorker’s 20-Under-40 list? It’s fiction’s Harvard Law.) 3. And what decent waitress memoirist or drywaller poet wouldn’t build a healthy case of resentment against such a class system? 4. And how could any recently conferred 26-year-old with eighty decent pages NOT feel a twinge of buyer’s remorse, or reflexive self-doubt, since one clearly doesn’t NEED an MFA–a degree that no more makes one a great writer than light shoes makes a great sprinter? No, it’s all working fine.
@ Seth fisher
My student is a writer, and I hope i did a lot to encourage her to continue to be a writer. I did all I could to talk her into being a writer who has a degree in marketing, not creative writing.
@ James yeh
None of these jobs require an mfa. That is a critical difference between the way an mfa “qualifies” one for a position and the way a jd qualifies one for a position. So that different thread, the one about how these positions are not only poorly paid but entirely accessible to folks with no mfa, is an important thread, one critical to the argument in favor of mfas.
@seth
Just one other thing. I think it is depressing too, and I wish we lived in a world where a BA and an MFA could be a safe track for a student like mine. But I don’t think we do. And I think that sucks. I do not disagree with you about that at all, I really don’t.
First: anyone read Gerald Howard’s piece in Tin House (linked on the Rumpus front page)? Has some interesting comments about MFA programs.
I want to define the debate more clearly. I am not saying that MFAs are inherently bad or that no one’s writing will improve as a result of an MFA or anything like that. My question is, are MFA programs improving American literature? Put another way, posit a super-talented young writer in the Hemingway mode. He’s written his promising Nick Adams stories but hasn’t yet composed his career-defining Sun Also Rises. Should he enroll in an MFA program? Is it likely to improve his writing?
If not, then who are MFA programs for? Not-so-talented writers? The existence of a graduate degree which improves the writing of mediocre writers is fine, but it isn’t really interesting to me. I don’t care about the tuition involved or the potential return on investment, I’m talking about making incredible art. Does an MFA program contribute to incredible art?
Sometimes it can be maddening the way that MFA program defenders continually revise downward the supposed benefits of an MFA program. “Well, it just provides time, place and community.” Or, “MFA programs may be good for some people but terrible for others.” These same comments are true of just about any gathering of two or more people. Can someone please offer a forceful, bold defense of the MFA?
To me, the real MFA defense is something Lincoln touches upon above– Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Denis Johnson, etc.
But these names notwithstanding, I’m not sure I’m ready to entrust the future of American letters to the MFA program. It strikes me as foolishness to believe that great writing can be taught just like plumbing (as is suggested by a comment above). And when I see so many Iowa writers on the 20 Under 40 list, it looks like a literary good ol’ boys club. I don’t want an institution crowning the next generation of great American writers.
I think John Gilmore more explicitly described what I have been trying to say. Neither of us is arguing against the act of writing or the art of literature or its place in society. We are arguing against the false analysis where an MFA is a necessary step towards artistic achievement and is therefore worth pursuing at any cost. It is not. You don’t need an MFA to be a great writer. Someone here wrote that people who hold an MFA are more likely to publish books. This is a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation.
For every brilliant, accomplished writer you name who holds an MFA, I can name a dozen successful authors who do not hold an MFA. (Nabokov famously held no degree, yet taught at Cornell for years) If I took the time to research it, I could also name thousands upon thousands of MFA holders who have not published in any meaningful way, who earn no money from anything remotely writerly and who would probably rather not talk about it.
I am getting my MFA (from #15 from that list, cus that TOTALLY matters) because I knew that if I didn’t, I would spend a good portion of the rest of my life wondering what if.
I felt like I owed it to myself. I felt like I had loved writing for all of my life, and I deserved to spend two years and several thousand dollars on dedicating myself to this discipline.
Now, I’m finishing up my second year and working my ass off. I write, I read, I go to class, I work an unpaid internship at a literary journal, and I teach English Comp to students that have no idea where to place a comma. Money is tight. The glamor is pretty much nil. But honestly? I fucking love my life.
And next year, when I have my degree? My life will pretty much look the same, except Going to Class will be replaced by Working Some Shitty Part Time Job to Make Ends Meet. So yes, an MFA doesn’t equate to literary success and fame. It’s just one of the first steps in a life of hard work and dedication.
So yes: know that an MFA isn’t going to get you anywhere on its own. But also know that if you feel anywhere close to how I felt, then you can’t go wrong with getting one.
@JCG, But the reason it’s depressing (and maybe the reason I sounded a little grumpy) is because of the defeatism in your tone. You’re telling her to do marketing because she won’t make any money writing, which means that there will most likely be one less person writing and reading and engaged while spending their life doing vapid soulless work. Because it’s really difficult to write without institutional support. It’s very time consuming and thankless, as we all know, and my guess is most people will kill that part of themselves and sit in a cubicle and live out a less fulfilling life without that support. The myth that a “real” writer will write no matter what is a crock. A “real” writer will put themselves in a situation in which they have the support they need to keep writing, whatever that means, which may mean an MFA. And I’m of the opinion that the more people writing, the better, not the other way around. The more people who write, the more people who are dedicated to seeing literature continue.
Doesn’t a single mom deserve something that might improve her life in a noneconomic way, too? If things are so bad financially for writers who get an MFA (and I’m not convinced they are. You won’t make money on a book, but writing well is such a rare talent that it can help you succeed at millions of other things if you’re creative about it. When I left my job in politics for an MFA, they were excited at the prospect I might come back to write for them), then why aren’t you working to make them better instead of just telling people to give up? I mean, if everyone who threw their hands up in the air actually dedicated the time they spent giving up trying to create a viable economic model for writing, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. Because when you told that woman to go into marketing you weren’t just reacting to a truth, you were reinforcing that truth. So maybe, instead of telling people not to study creative writing, you should tell them that right now, the economics of it aren’t great. They would make more money going into marketing. But if they’re going to be happier writing, as I think most of the world would be, they should devote their life to it, and as part of that, try to develop an economic model that might actually work (see Rumpus Book Club, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s.)
Hey, Seth,
I write ad copy for a living. This work supports me, my wife, my embryonic kid, and will soon enough be called upon to support other members of my family as they age. When my father was sick I could afford to take time off work, fly to be with him and nurse him until he died. I find it immensely satisfying that I can take care of the people I love. There is nothing soulless about it.
Every weekday morning I go to the office and get together with a group of smart, funny, engaged people who care about the world that they live in, but who are grown up enough to recognize that you got to get paid. In their non-working hours my co-workers are portrait painters, musicians, fiction writers, actors, comedians and film makers. Again, completely bereft of soullessness. I see creativity and life in the faces of my colleagues all day, every day.
I think you, and many others commenting on this board, need to step outside the world of the MFA. You’re in some kind of weird echo chamber. The notion that a writer will find the time to write is not a crock. It’s the truth. MFAs did not exist until fifty years ago, yet every nation in history has produced great literature. How do you argue with that? More importantly, why?
Hey, Brian, thanks! This is the only time I’ve commented here, though I read daily.
Right on, John. Historical context is one door out of the echo chamber, eh?
Actually, of all the places to get a creative writing degree, undergraduate is probably the best. Lots of very decent jobs could not care less what your major was, or it’s a good place to do a minor or double major. Graduate school is the bigger issue.
@john, A writer will find time to write, true, but what I’m saying is that it’s because of the people around her. It’s the people around her, the community, that gives a person that ability. The idea that it’s something done alone, except in the literal sense, seems a bit off to me. You are spending hours alone in that room. It affects your family, your friends, everyone. If you don’t surround yourself with people that support that, you’re not gonna write. And an MFA can help with that. It’s not the only way, no. I wasn’t saying that. But it is a way to give you the confidence to do that, and it can be invaluable to people, and if people are expressing an interest, to tell people not to do it or to tell people to do something else seems counter to creating a world where people appreciate literature.
And I’m sorry if I implied that your job is soulless, or that all marketing or for profit jobs are. I shouldn’t have said that. But I personally loathe the for profit world because of my experiences with it. The businesses I’ve worked for have been TERRIBLE. I had one job working for an infomercial production company. I had another writing copy for real estate. I wasn’t invested in any of it. Everyone around me was fixated on nothing but money. People ate and smoked their problems. They were creative, interesting people, many of them, but they were dying inside because they spent all day watching Lindsay Lohan pimp zit cream. And maybe not all for profit or marketing jobs are like that. But many, many, many of them are.
Also, I work in grant writing and data entry. I’ve been out of my MFA for awhile. When I was in it, I was at a partial residency. Almost none of the people I spend my time with are in an MFA. So it might not be quite fair to say I live in a MFA echo chamber.
Last year, I had a conversation with my long time customer:
“Didn’ see your daughter for a long time. How is she? Still in school?”
“Oh, yes, she is in New York, studying creative writing. She wants to be a writer.”
“Oh, great! Great to be a writer. She will be very rich!”
“Oh, Why?”
“Look at them, Those Harry Potter and Twilight!”
“I think you, and many others commenting on this board, need to step outside the world of the MFA. You’re in some kind of weird echo chamber. The notion that a writer will find the time to write is not a crock. It’s the truth. MFAs did not exist until fifty years ago, yet every nation in history has produced great literature. How do you argue with that? More importantly, why?”
This seems slightly ironic given your constant talk about the importance of money. You do realize that for literary history pre 50 years ago, the vast vast majority of writers came from privileged backgrounds and the few who weren’t were often patroned by the rich in some way. The fact that Tolstoy and Nabokov and all the rest were mostly really rich is hardly a great argument for why writers should avoid MFA programs that fund them and provide them with the time and space to write.
Also, the constant refrain that the “academic” world is some soulless hell in which all creativity is sucked dry coupled with the idea that corporate marketing is a place of great creativity literally made me laugh out loud.
L,
I think you’ve hit it on the head. Pre fifty years ago, the writing came from priveledged backgrounds and much that didn’t was somehow patroned by the rich.
The belief that by loading a “non-privileged” student up with fifty thousand dollars of debt we are somehow overcoming the historical record of suppressing the poor and “giving them opportunities” is the sort of illogical insanity that characterizes the very worst of social justice arguments. The humanities were for the wealthy (or more accurately the university was for the wealthy, and the university was for humanities/sciences), and they remain for the wealthy but before you quote me don’t mistake my recognition of this reality for a vote in favor of this system. The fact that I recognize that humanities are for the wealthy doesn’t mean I think they ought to be.
The solution has nothing to do with convincing the impoverished to bury themselves alive in debt. The solution to the problem of the humanities continuing to be for the wealthy can be addressed by stopping the problem at its exploitative source, which is unfunded positions within mfa programs. A cultural refusal to recognize that bullshit for anything other than exploitation would go a long way. So far, Seth Abramson is doing the most on this front by ranking school funding.
The other solution, of course, is socialized education and abolishment of student lending. Higher taxes. Etc.
@JCG I don’t think we actually disagree on much. Should all writing programs be fully funded? Yes. Is it a crock of shit that they’re not? Yes. Does it suck to go into a lot of debt for one? Sure. Should the poor do that? We might disagree a little on that, but I’ll even meet you at probably not. Is socialized education worth higher taxes? Not exactly sure what you think there, but I think you were a fan, and I’d agree if that’s the case.
The difference is that I don’t think there’s any way writing programs are ever going to get to the point where they are fully funded if writing teachers are going around telling people that MFAs are ripoffs. And if they never get fully funded, than it will mostly continue to be the rich with the resources to write. If we don’t respect what we’re doing, then how can we expect others to respect it enough to fund it? If WE’RE going around saying the whole thing isn’t worth the money, what government agency or philanthropist is going to come along and say they’d like to start an endowment?
As long as people, rich or poor, go into it knowing there won’t be a financial reward at the end, where is the problem? We should encourage that kind of idealistic thinking about literature, shouldn’t we? Isn’t it kind of paternalistic to tell people they don’t know what they’re getting into?
@L Right on.@Lara, I think you’re dead right about the undergrad thing.
Okay, I’m going to stop this now. I’ve spent what might qualify as a pathetic amount of time arguing on the Internet today. Very good discussion, though.
Socialized education. Big fan.
Great conversation. I just want to add a thought:
MFA programs don’t even TRY to “make” good writers (whatever the hell that would mean).
They try to RECRUIT good writers.
Big difference.
Also, as a writer and artist and lifelong risktaking personality, I really don’t give a flying futon about these long term financial planning problems, and I find the expectation that you wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) jump into an MFA or anything else you feel like trying without some sort of material guarantee very sad. If that’s how you live your life — you only do things if you know yer gonna git yers — your life will be shallow and narrow and very dry.
However, it is all of our right to live how we want and make the choices we want. It really does “take all kinds.” People who want to play it safe and only want to spend money and time on things with a guaranteed material return better go play in another sandbox — the arts ain’t your world. Neither is investment banking. Maybe a nice job with the IRS?
Also, Tod Goldberg’s comment is right-on.
Yep yep yep, Seth, I do think we agree Mostly. Also, your point about respecting the mfa and thus increasing chances of funding from philanthropists makes sense.
@Victoria = You’re smart. Yes; Anelise: thnaks for writing this–it’s a better take on the MFA debates than most I’ve read.
Okay, not directed at anybody specifically, but: Fuck all this noise about insider publication and club admittance and all the other fluffy reasons to go to an MFA program. Fawning over literary social life and club membership seems pathetic to me, like the fat kid standing outside Senior Prom, crying, instead of crashing the doors and asking the Prom Queen (or King) to dance. Look, if making a New Yorker list or being invited to read with XYZ poet is your primary goal as a writer, then your goals are bankrupt.
1. You should go to an MFA program to become a better writer. That’s 95% of it. Fill up the other 5% with connections and credibility and all that.
2. Unless you can pay almost all the tuition up-front or as-you-go (low-res model), you should not embrace the Ponzi scheme by going to that MFA program. Get better until you are good enough to get into a program that pays you. (In Communist MFA program, program pays you!) Apply, fail, rewrite, apply again, fail better. Repeat. Paying $100K or $40K to maybe get into an imaginary academic club or, more likely, be able to teach six sections of community college comp is dumb, and no iterations of these Are-MFA-programs-worth-it? discussions will ever change my mind on that. The decision of an admittance committee might be a BS litmus test as a writer, but if you get ten rejections from schools you thought you’d like, and one acceptance from your $100K “safety school”, then you should embrace the litmus test you’ve chosen and write a new, better story, not a deposit check.
3. The whole argument changes when it’s free. If you think two-three years of learning and writing time will help you and it’s free or damn close to it, go! If you hate it or feel stifled, it’s equally free to quit. @John said “You don’t need to pay George Saunders or anyone else $100,000 for the right to write and read books.” He’s right, but you also don’t have to pay anything to sit in George’s classroom at Syracuse and learn from him.
4. It doesn’t matter how bad you want to be a writer, and willingness-to-spend-money is not that same as talent or ambition. You have to be good enough, before and after whatever training you receive or create. Yes, crap sometimes gets published and yes, brilliance sometimes gets rejected. But that’s life–go look at any professional sports draft, or at the doufus who’s your boss–so buck up and quit trying to beat that system with a piece of paper. With all the online and small-circulation outlets there are now, I believe that good work will get published, somehow. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t bother to write.
i feel like I went about it backwards, learned to write, published non-fiction books and many articles in major magazines, and then began writing fiction about three years ago and published that in places like the paris review, southern review, best american short stories, etc, and then realized that the only way I was going to make a living outside of journalism and non-fiction was by teaching, and to do that, i need an mfa. so i have begun thinking about going back to get an mfa for the credential, which is totally backwards and seems too cynical even for me.
I really enjoy reading these comments. This is the best comments column I’ve ever read on internet becuase all the commentators are so good in writing. Very smart debate!
Lincoln says this so well. It should be written on the wall of every workshop classroom:
I would also say that if you view a workshop as a focus group for your work its much less helpful than if you view it as a time to learn how to critique other people’s work. Really articulating what is working or failing, at least for you, in someone’s work is immensely helpful for your own writing. I think most workshoppers learn more from critiquing others than having their work critiqued (though there is plenty of help in that. NOT, as you say, if you take it as a focus group to drive your work to the mean, but if you take it as an idea generating session where the majority of comments should be ignored but a handful will click with you in just the right way and let you see the piece differently.)
@Sarah E… Yep, it’s wheat and chaff. . I should probably get an MFA so I can get all those embarrasing misheard phrases out of my head from childhood when I’m ranting about something. (I once had a CW teacher laugh in my face when I spelled segue, “segway.”)
@John. Yeah, paying for an MFA was never even part of my plan. Applying to funded programs (I imagine) is a bit like playing the lottery, but it’s probably worth the wait to go solo and improve on your own until someone offers you a TA or a stipend, then it’d be silly to turn down a free two-to-three year block of writing and reading. Although, it’s getting to the point where I’d have to leave my “trade” job (as you called it) to get into the program, and I’d have to take a serious pay cut.
George Saunders (I think it was an interview in the Believer) said he’s no longer a “careerist” when it comes to MFA programs, as in, he doesn’t think students should expect to fund themselves with their writing for a long time (if at all). I think that’s pretty encouraging, although he included being a professor as a side-career, which the only way aquire is to get a book out, but I can see where he’s coming from.
I have an MFA and it’s a crock. I took one workshop (fiction) and two weeks of the second semester workshop. The first was fine, the teacher conscionable (sp) and the group varied enoughp-though I showed my one “experimental” story and it was crushed and I didn’t have the ego to keep it as is (published in a much-crushed but viable version ten or so years later in lovely Storyglossia). The 2nd workshop I was not allowed to talk, plus it was ALL WOMEN. I am not all woman though I am a woman. The prof. shushed me everytime I tried to comment. Not just me. She was terrified someone was going to offer criticism. This was at Sarah Lawrence. I’d been adjunct in writing for four years (one little spot) at Antioch/Seattle’s contnuing ed. program, so I had some experience with broaching the subject5 kindly. After 2 weeks I got out, and never took another workshop. One more semester and I graduated (having written my way out). I owe a shitload, still, for not much of anything. I thought it would help with jobs, I’m a born teacher, but I didn’t publish a book (poetry!) until last year (got my MFA in ’96). I read at a bookstore recently with one of the tenured of SLC. He blanched when he realized that when I talked about teaching writing, as adjunct, I was talking about teaching FIVE Composition classes (I burned out–sooooooo many papers). To be a little fair the director of the program died a month before school started and a nasty piece of work took over for him. The “community” of academics I was promised was mainly “I’m not paid to talk to you.” So that’s one example, and especially horrendous. But the year before I went I was in a poetry group–five women meeting once a month to critique work–and it was great. GREAT. So workshops can work but maybe best when you choose one’s fellow workshoppers. I have taken ONE poetry workshop. It last four hours (one of those local master classes). Don’t even get me started. But at least it was only $125.
I should add I was 47 when I went to grad. school, was new to New York (well, my family moved from N.Y. to L.A. when I was 8), knew absolutely no one, was broke, used to living funky to accommodate health issues and undeveloped sensen of status, already had ten stories published and some poems, had been a book reviewer, freelance, for the Seattle Times, gotten two small grants, about $2k each. But the faculty knew that. My app. essay was kind of funny and so I imagine they were expecting a happy person (because funny people are always happy people; !!!). Unlike Rick Rofihe I can’t say, easy breezy, I wrote a story and it was accepted in the New Yorker though Rick’s rejected every story I ever submitted–which is okay. We both love Uncle Scrooge, Donald and the nephews. Back to grad school: I sometimes wonder if I’d written the other kind of essay, the one we can all write, about insanities of childhod, if I would have been treated differently or not accepted. I happened to read Looking Backward, by Bellamy, when I was in grad. school. The set-up–the huddled dirty masses running alongside a carriage which can fit only a few–and those few assuming they belong, are special, different. Then one falls off and a huddled dirty one is lofted on high and then believes she is special, different. Ultimate Ponzi. And so reminded me of many creative writing faculty. We all know History’s Great Ponzi will lift three or five of us to Immortality. The rest is just paying the rent and that is a reality I admit has always stumped me. I sometimes write about this on my blog, my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com. Sometimes I write about tuna croquettes and the poem. Anyone want to publish my novel? The To-Do List Manifesto?
And to be fair, Sarah Lawrence did let me get out that one semseter early and I am an unusual person. But interesting! In retrospect I see that coming to New York might have been the greater reason for all this–I got busted open (and I didn’t think I could be more busted but it was indeed possible) and picking up the pieces has saved me.
I was talking about this with a friend who owes money for an MFA in theater (not SLC). We both agree we wouldn’t about the programs if we didn’t owe money. I was the idiot to believe my old trick of landing on my feet would carry me. It didn’t. I was perhaps their most knowledgable student and still the biggest sucker. Okay, back to life. Job interviews tomorrow and Thursday. Must rinse out a few things.
oh, m-F-a. I totally thought you were talking about m-B-a. MFAs are totally worthless.
Totally fascinating discussion. Here’s another take. I work at a state university with three charming, very talented colleagues in CW (I’m a lowly part-timer), all of whom have books out, and, if I’m not mistaken, all on the job market or ready to shoot themselves because their teaching load is so horrible they have no time to practice their art. Thirty students to a class, three or four classes, committee assignments, and no well-paying gigs at conferences on the horizon. I wonder if all of them might be happier if they worked as waiters or zookeepers or something. At least they’d have more time
to write.
Great discussion! My two cents: fully-funded programs sound great, but I’ve seen a lot more evidence of people taking on massive debt in the pursuit of MFAs. I don’t know of any fully funded programs here in the bay area, but I do know that SFSU takes in more than 60 new MFA students each year, and offers nearly nothing relating to funding to any of them. I wonder if anyone could give some sort of credible percentage of how many programs offer full funding?
I’m doing an MFA at Iowa right now, and can tell you the benefits of this program: 1. Years of paid time to focus solely on writing and honing your craft. 2. Intense focus on deconstructing good writing with other people who are as invested and interested as you are. 3. Having successful and knowledgeable writers closely reading and critiquing your work. 4. Editors and literary agents actually come here to offer up meetings with them. Show me a major editor out there in the “real world” who will read your unsolicited manuscript, let alone make a coffee appointment with you to discuss your work. 5. Teaching experience. Yeah, you can say this is a waste of time, but frankly, I would rather work in academia in the field I love for low pay than be a waitress. At least teaching is constantly teaching me more about writing and literature. 6. Yes, connections. As in, your professors or colleagues can help open doors to editors and agents that might otherwise be close.
But most importantly, it’s a chance to dedicate a few years to writing, something I struggled with when I was working a 9-5 job.
Granted, I am at Iowa and have a funded spot, which is different than dropping a ton of cash at a middle-list university, but in the end, if this is what you love, I still think it is worth it for the discipline and the immersion it gives you. Even if I hadn’t gotten into Iowa, I would still have done an MFA elsewhere. But if you are looking at it as a cash in = cash out experience, then you will be disappointed.
@lara
I’m really interested in this question of Writing MFA vs. Fine Art MFAs. Does the same kind of debate happen with other arts?
This is from the Iowa website:
“Though we agree in part with the popular insistence that writing cannot be taught, we exist and proceed on the assumption that talent can be developed, and we see our possibilities and limitations as a school in that light. If one can “learn” to play the violin or to paint, one can “learn” to write, though no processes of externally induced training can ensure that one will do it well.”
This is kind of the attitude we have toward other arts, so what makes writing MFAs different? Nobody contests our need to learn how to paint, play violin, shoot film, dance. I think, maybe, it’s this (perhaps misguided) notion that “anyone can write”–we use language everyday, we write these comments, we think we can all be writers. This gives us hope. And all of us are writers, but there is definitely still a lot of “skill” required. What do we mean when we say “we’ve matured and improved” in our writing? Something is getting better…it might just be more difficult to pin down than other arts.
@ caleb
I finally got around to reading the Seekins essay you linked. It’s great to hear the story from a poetry point of view, especially since his discussion about Billy Collins sounded a lot like Mcgurl’s “lower middle class modernism” category and then of course the cry for minority groups to “find their voice” etc. And this essay was about an MFA experience circa ’95? I think there’s a lot of legitimacy in Mcgurl’s assessments, but perhaps more accurate for that time period.
@ryan
Hah! I never took Doctorow’s class. Funny though.
@Ann
“God forbid,” just because, as an Asian-American writer I feel a lot of external (perceived market) pressure to write that kind of thing. “Local color is interesting” people keep insisting. But for me, it’s like, “Ugh. Do I have to?” (I don’t have to.)
i wish tao lin had gotten an mfa. that would have made shoplifting from american apparel much more palatable. dunno if i could spend another minute reading about gchat and being bored. also wish tao lin’s first name was jonathan.
@James Yeh: FYI, an MFA does not qualify anyone for a copyediting job, at least not in book publishing.
I know because I spent many years making hiring decisions as an editor and managing editor at major trade and university presses. I also taught aspiring editors in certificate programs run by two universities, and I can promise you that there is no automatic transfer of skills between MFA studies and copyediting work.
An MFA is not a disqualification for such work, but it’s almost a strike against you, frankly. All the publishing people I know who have ever been in my position wanted to run the other way when approached by people who said they were looking for copyediting work because they “love to read.” Copyediting is not reading.
The pay is also notoriously low, since notions of fair pay for copyeditors derive from an era when most copyediting, at least in book publishing, was done by women (still is, actually). Women were (and, effectively, are) presumed to have access to a second income (that is, a husband’s) or to be working only as long as it might take them to gain access to a second income (that is, a husband’s).
Maybe things are different in some of the online environments. I hope so.
I am 53, honorably working 12 hours a day for 30 years to raise a family, tragically paying all my attention to the literary world this whole time–dreaming someday my name will be on a real book cover. Raymond Carver is my hero. Should I blame on the MFA Impossible for my dream-can-never-come-true, or on this harsh life that I didn’t choose?
@Mia,
I’m glad to hear Iowa is a genuine experience, I believe Tom Kealy had some bad words for the program’s funding. Do they take away funding from students and give it to others according to progress? Or is that a misconception?
If you’re stupid enough to pay for a MFA, or any degree in the humanities, that’s you’re fault. I got into a program that is fully funded, and I haven’t read a criticism of MFA programs that actually applies to me. So going to NYU is dumb. Really dumb.
@Michael: They no longer have a “tiered” funding system, as that was called. Students are now funded for the duration of their study if they are offered funding on admission (and I believe that everyone who is admitted is funded now). And no, it doesn’t make you rich. I’m getting around $12,000 a year for my Teaching Assistantship. But Iowa City doesn’t cost much to live in, and with your tuition waved and good health insurance in the package, I could find worse ways to spend my time. I’m loving being here. There is even funding to attend the overseas workshop in the summer (we are going to the Philippines this year, Corfu this past summer) and each student gets money to travel to conferences.
I am in the process of finishing my first book (non-fiction, no MFA). I have been lucky enough to have an extremely supportive agent and a super editor. What this means, is that I am having the experience of having people line edit my work. I am being asked tough questions that I have to answer. I am learning more about me, about writing and editing, and about my book. All this is stuff I can take with me to the next project — whatever it is. So, I see the question as not being about to MFA or not MFA, but where can writers go to get serious support and critique? The few writers groups I’ve been a part of where full of cookies and hugs. Hardly the stuff that helps you get serious about the craft.
Protesting the explosion of art schools in the early 20c, poet and boxer Arthur Cravan says (1917): “I am astonished that some crook has not had the idea of opening a writing school.”
I would’ve gone to Rapallo, or Mexico City/Black Mt. but these were hardly ‘schools,’ in the purse-targeted sense of that word.
Since my second semester in the Stonecoast MFA program, I’ve been having conversations with other writers about the value of the degree. True, post-grad success depends on the individual, and yes, not all students in a program are going to ever be any good.
For myself, having been writing in spare moments and struggling to acquire certain technical skills other people thought I should have, my MFA program felt like an oasis in the desert. It saved me, not because I honed my writing
technique and learned how to structure a story, but because the very experience of being around other aspiring writers and being mentored by professional, successful writers forced me to evaluate my own goals and aspirations and finally make those critical decisions to dive in, trusting that if I want it badly enough, if I work my ass off, and if I am lucky, I will become a writer. I am now teaching evening courses to community “writers” and I know that some of them will never become writers. We all have to ask the hard questions about why we are actually there. Also, I had to fight to hold onto my own vision of story-telling, even when my peers tried to force me to alter stories.
Anyone considering a student loan should take a good, long look at this: http://consumerist.com/2010/09/student-loans-gateway-drug-to-debt-slavery.html
“If you’re stupid enough to pay for a MFA, or any degree in the humanities, that’s you’re fault. I got into a program that is fully funded, and I haven’t read a criticism of MFA programs that actually applies to me. So going to NYU is dumb. Really dumb.”
But it’s YOUR fault that you still haven’t learned grammar.
This is a really interesting conversation and I am enjoying everyone’s points but some of them seem so ludicrous. Taken to their logical conclusions it means that everyone should base every decision of his or her life on purely economic reasoning. (And I too love me some socialized education.) People spend $50k or $100k or much, much more on houses and no one berates them. It is SHELTER, a place to live. People spend $10k on a car and everyone understands, you need something to drive. But when you want to know more and don’t know where to look and organized education might help you, suddenly it is a waste of money? (I definitely never should have had kids. They are totally not going to pay for themselves! I should have run a cost-benefit analysis on that…)
I agree that everyone should be an informed “buyer” but many students leave their B.A. or B.S. with as much debt as I have. I know veterinary students who will never, ever be able to pay off their debt unless they eventually buy their own practice. It isn’t fair to single out the MFA as not worth it. By some of this reasoning it seems that any EDUCATION wouldn’t be worth it unless you graduate with a 75k a year job absolutely promised to you.
I guess I don’t understand how much anger there seems to be wrapped up in this debate, if not overtly then as an undercurrent. I’m currently getting my MFA at Iowa, and I’m very happy with my level of funding (Full disclosure: I also received fully funded offers from Texas and Cornell as well, and full/highly funded offers from several other schools, which I disclose only to make clear that my perspective is admittedly emanating from well ‘inside the establishment’ or whatever) as well as with the implications for my future employment that my choice to pursue an MFA holds, but it was never my understanding that the questions of creating meaningful, relevant and humane fiction and of making money ever had all that much to do with each other. The idea that the ‘MFA debate’ is a necessary one is, I think most people can recognize, a little silly; on one hand, certainly those attending MFA programs (especially those paying to attend one) are not being forced to, and on the other, the MFA is clearly not an exclusive prerequisite for writing well or getting published, the latter of which tends to have more weight when looking for teaching jobs anyway.
I wonder if the anger and sniping that seems to fuel this debate isn’t really more about something else; perhaps the general (and especially literary) public’s reaction to the aimlessness of purpose that seems common in popular fiction these days (and which also seems to be the principal complaint about the writing MFA programs supposedly produce). Hashing out in every corner of the internet whether an MFA is a good or bad, sensible or irresponsible, and effective or ineffective model with which to pursue the improvement of one’s writing seems to me to sound much more like a people in angry mourning for the core role of fiction/stories in general; to help us towards making some kind of meaning out of the often bewildering, frustrating, violent, morally listless and hollow ‘modern age of America’, whatever that might mean. The anger, then, as I read it anyway, of those speaking out against MFA programs seems to mostly come from the insult of the contention that MFA programs are really the best way to foster quality fiction that could serve this purpose; the implication of these voices is if this is so, where are the results?
Well, I would say that they’re everywhere, but that’s just me. And that’s not the real reason MFA programs seem to have value, especially in this moment, for young writers (or at least this young writer) in America. To me, what’s sort of ironic about all this is that the most valuable thing an MFA seems to offer (even at Iowa) is the secure knowledge that you are trying something that you will most likely fail at, that you and most of your class (even at Iowa, or wherever else) will probably never make any money from doing what you love, and that, even if you are very lucky, you will probably reach a small, concerned readership who will promptly divide themselves, mostly on comment threads, as to whether you are the next great writer or a pretentious fraud. And the value of this knowledge seems to be that the human beauty of writing (maybe also of wanting to write) is that you know all this, and you try anyway. You try because it is the only human thing you can do. You try because you’re too dumb, or sad, or lonely, or hopeful not to try. You try, and don’t know why you’re trying. You try and read The Rumpus, and get angry or jealous and you try some more. You try, in an MFA program or not, and hope that you are making something, somewhere better. All other discussion is, to me anyway, a vaguely sad falling off from this first world of hope.
@Arna–lovely points. Believe me, I know I would have been better off as an X-ray technician. But the heart wants what it wants. I never believed my life would be easy after I had my MFA. I just hoped I would learn a lot. And I did. And not all of it was in the arena of writing either.
“Back in high school I went to a selective program for kids who liked writing around my state.”
Love the image of all those kids, crayons and pencils and sparkle pens in hand, writing o’er hill and dale, scribbling on napkins at the McD’s, chalking words on the streets, moving on to the next house, as they make their collective, selective ways around their state.
What a gorgeous misplaced modifier, Michael on Oct 1 at 10:02.
I’m plucking pages from a story.
To MFA.
To not MFA.
To MFA.
To not MFA.
To MFA.
To not MFA.
(It’s a long story.)
To . . . .
Wait, I lost my train of thought. (Same thing happened to me when I was in college, which might be why I flunked out.)
. . . . MFA.
To not MFA.
(I once had a professor–personal mentor, private setting–throw a story at me and tell me it wasn’t worth his time. Bastard, he was. Though he might have been right.)
To MFA.
To not MFA.
To MFA.
To not MFA.
(Is it even possible to get into a program without a four year degree? Maybe I could buy one of those quickies online. Dear Iowa, I got mine from iddlepiddle.com. Yes, I know the name sounds suspect, but I really like your program and want to sit where Flannery O’Connor sat and beam accordingly.)
To MFA.
To not MFA.
(The next page sucks but I’m counting it anyway.)
To MFA!
(Shoot, the last two pages were stuck together.)
To not MFA.
(Damn. Damn. Damn. Why did I have to choose a story with an odd number of pages?)
One of the things missing from this discussion is a comparison with writers from other countries, where in many cases there are no MFA programs.
The problem is our culture does not value the liberal arts in general–literacy, philosophy or critical thinking. An MFA is a great thing if you want to write in life. Live life.
Perhaps all this neurotic angst is just symptomatic of students feeling imposed guilt by a society that has not value for writing and art.
My dilemma was should I MFA or get a degree in Literature? I went for literature (as well as a master’s certificate in creative writing). I am so glad I went for literature. But again, culture does not value a degree in literature because it does not value literacy, philosophy or critical thinking. Poetry!
But I know what my degrees mean to my life and soul. If MFA graduates still don’t know after they’ve graduated what the value was, something’s wrong.
What is “writing” anyway? My God. My whole life is spent circling around all the possibilities of it. It is a lifelong study and art. Why does everyone think there is some grand singular answer?
Maybe the real question everyone is secretly asking is can an MFA get me to turn out a masterpiece? Well, we know the greatest artists have certainly studied and understood Structure. That is a fact. But as far as those other elusive qualities of great art–good luck trying to capture it in a jar.
But isn’t it interesting that no matter how many MFA graduates we have, the old masterpieces remain masterpieces? Great art is great art. And that is not something you can just claim. But when a masterpieces comes through someone, it is a gift for all of us.
@SarahSarah You complain too much. SS: I know.
@SarahSarai It’s the money, isn’t it? SS: And that I could be such a sucker.
@SarahSarai How can I help? SS: Change Tao Lin’s first name to Richard. Switch names, in fact, so it’s Tao Yates and Richard Lin. Two-fer-one the books: Richard Lifting Tao.
@SarahSarai I thought you were going to the Yankees game. Laundry? Do you want the line-up distracted by your soiled clothes?
###
John Lennon’s ms. of “Imagine”–his very charming handwriting:
http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/2010/10/john-lennon-we-phoned-nyc-operator-on.html
I’ve come to think of MFAs as more of an MLM scheme, like AMway, than a Ponzi scheme. You’re always trying to build your downline. Students get MFAs to teach still new generations of candidates, year after year after year. The whole thing is shameless and yet I would love to take a couple of years off to focus on my writing in a good program. Would absolutely love to.
@Scott
I save my bestest english for blog comments.
I am from a generation of poets who largely earned master’s degrees in disciplines other than creative writing, in many cases because getting an MFA in creative writing was in our day not such a common thing to do.
In my case, there were only about 25 MFA programs in writing in the entire country at the time I was in graduate school (1972–1975). By the time I found out about such programs, I had already finished grad school. (That is, I’d left my PhD program with an MA after having completed all the coursework and exams for a doctorate in two foreign languages and their literatures.)
At that point, I did not want to turn around and go right back to graduate school, nor was there the kind of funding that exists today. My way through grad school had already been paid 100 percent by a teaching fellowship with tuition waivers and a decent stipend, and I had won a prestigious fellowship midway through that gave me a year to do nothing but travel and write poems. So I felt that I had done my time in school. Anyway, I had already been a committed poet for a good ten years and had some publications to show for it, too.
Another reason why I would not have gone back to school for an MFA in creative writing, then or later on, is that I am not someone who enjoys workshops or finds them particularly useful. It would be untrue to say that I have never received useful feedback in the occasional workshops in which I’ve enrolled (a total of six—at writers’ conferences, at university extensions, and in more informal settings—with well-known poets as instructors). But whatever value those workshops had for me was more than outweighed by the burden of spending time commenting on others’ work. I did comment, of course—well and generously, as the instructors and my fellow participants consistently told me—but it wasn’t worth my time and effort. It would have been better for me to spend that time and effort reading excellent, fully realized poems, which has always been my way of learning.
I’ve been living all these years by my wits—working at all kinds of odd jobs as well as at ghostwriting, editing, and what have you. Except for five years in my twenties, when I was an adjunct teaching conversation, composition, and literature classes in the languages in which I earned my MA, and another six years when I worked as an editor at two university presses, I have made my living entirely outside academic settings. And that has suited me just fine.
I say all this because the “debate†over the MFA degree seems to me not to be really about the quality of the writing that MFA programs may or may not encourage. I think it’s more about the possibility—or, for MFA-less poets like me, the near impossibility—of gaining resources such as jobs, prizes, grants, fellowships, residencies, and greased skids to publication, as well as such intangibles as literary renown.
I’ve been living the way I want to. I’ve been writing and publishing about as much as I’ve wanted to all these years. Given the chance, I wouldn’t change much about my history. I have no real complaints.
Nevertheless, I do think it’s fair to say that the increasingly hegemonic MFA/industrial complex can put academy-shunning, workshop-allergic poets like me at a certain disadvantage, not just in terms of academically based networks and rewards but also in terms of respect from people who claim to be fellow artists. Too often we’re condescended to, when we’re not simply seem as amusing old cranks, by poets who have MFAs but who have been writing and publishing (if they have published at all) for a fraction of the time we’ve already put in at perfecting our craft and our art.
Disrespect like that is hurtful, and I suspect that the emotional wounding it causes is the reason for no small amount of the animus that erupts whenever the “MFA or no MFA†discussion wheezes to life yet again.
I looked for myself in the picture of Harry Crews, but then saw the date: 1980. I was still in prison that year.
–Pat MacEnulty (went for the Ph.D. instead)
I don’t get the anger in this debate. There are all sorts of MFA programs, with differing structures, styles, and costs.
Some writers benefit from them. Some don’t. There were great writers with MFAs and great writers who never went to college, let alone grad school. I don’t know how any sane person can argue otherwise. An MFA program isn’t right for everyone, but it’s right for a lot of people.
As for the finances, plenty of programs offer funding, usually in exchange for TAing. Consider the money involved before you make a decision, and if you DO need to take out some loans, only take out a reasonable amount that you can pay back in a relatively short period of time–you should probably not be paying off your student loans for an MFA for longer than it took you to get the degree. Consider your undergrad debt load as well, and try not to take out private or unsubsidized loans.
Consider a year in the Americorps first–the stipend paid for my first year’s room and board in the dorm while I was earning an MFA, allowing me to bank most of my pitiful TA salary towards the next two years. I finished a BFA and an MFA with a grand total of $14K in loans and had those paid off within two years. I lived very frugally during those times, but it was doable.
Oh, and hint hint: many state schools have MFA programs now, and their tuition is usually reasonable for in-state students. Consider them–don’t just take a look at how flashy the authors teaching are. Consider 1.) how good they are at writing and 2.) how good they are at teaching. Some great writers make terrible teachers.
And be ready to live like a starving artist while you’re in school and for a few years afterwards while you’re paying off your loans if you took those.
The Creative Writing Program Industry is a self-serving, self-perpetuating scheme akin to the airplane game. The money, in the form of high-priced tuition, flows from the bottom to the top, from the “passengers,” who shell out big bucks in hopes of “becoming a writer,” to the top, which is occupied by the pilots, i.e. established poets and prose writers. When one has literally paid their dues, they move up a rung. To do what? Get a job in a creative writing program, what else?
What’s sad is not only the illusion these programs perpetuate of being able to turn people into writers, but that the writers who head up these programs atrophy in the sterile and all-too-safe environment of academia. Pick up the latest work by any big-name poet or novelist heading up a creative writing program and you’ll encounter dull, lifeless writing, ususally abstruse and clotted with obscure allusions only a fellow academic could decipher.
Creative writing programs may advance careers, but they are the kiss of death for creative writing. Shakespeare, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, etc. etc.–none of them had MFAs or, that truly absurd notion, a Ph.D. in creative writing.
Writing is simple, in a way. You don’t need any more materials than a pen and paper. All you need to do is read the works of great writers to get a feel for what’s been done. And then, most importantly, you have to have something to say.
“Any big-name poet [sic] or novelist heading up a creative writing program”? Broad brush you’re using there, Margaux!
But why cite all the famous writers who did not attend nonexistent MFA programs? The truth is that we simply don’t know what effects their enrollment in MFA programs would have had on their writing and careers.
What is clear is that there are writers who thrive in MFA programs, as students and as teachers, and there are writers who do not thrive in that environment or would not thrive if they were to enter it.
Anyway, plenty of good MFA programs offer full funding these days, which means that no one really has to incur mountains of debt as a condition of spending a couple of years focusing on issues of craft that might take many more years of solitary labor to master, and so your Airplane Game analogy lacks the currency it may once have had.
As for creative writing programs advancing careers, that simply doesn’t happen for most MFA graduates. Many factors enter into a successful and enduring literary career; talent, past a certain minimum threshold, is probably the least of them.
And the larger point is that most writers who go through MFA programs, just like most writers who don’t, will never attain the renown of the illustrious writers whose names you rattled off. With or without an MFA, the best that most writers can hope for is to move from being unknown to being obscure and then forgotten, a trajectory that will become virtually synonymous with the writer’s path as time goes on, and as false and already outmoded “rock star” models of the writer’s life disappear completely.
None of this means that writers are not literary artists, or that their art should be discounted and dismissed if it doesn’t enter the canon (a fancy term for a particular kind of temporary, somewhat arbitrary market segment).
In short, if nobody is forced to attend an MFA program as a condition of being a writer, if nobody has to go into debt to attend an MFA program, and if worldly success for all writers is so slight and so elusive as to confirm that writing is a labor of love in a gift economy, then just where is the harm in MFA programs?
This is classic:
She reasons with us like we are committed adults and we take her advice seriously. She puts our writing on an overhead projector and line-edits each page. She pays attention. “Cliche?†She writes in the margin. “What’s new about this?†and then “Really?†For this specificity, we adore her–unanimously. Zadie doesn’t have an MFA.
I think that says it all.
I have not read all the posts because I was not an MFA student so I don’t want to be presumptuous with the various topics raised. I did however spend a lot of time in literatue classes with MFA students while working toward my MA in English. I couldn’t resist responding to your opening paragraph because it accurately sums up my opinion as well as that of other fellow plain old MA students of MFA students. Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of MFA students I encountered in classes were practically obnoxious during discussions apparently loving to hear themselves speak so much and feeling so certain of their judgements that they felt they needed to comment on every little detail of whatever the topic of the class was. No one else could get a word in when there were MFA students in class. And the more MFA students in a single class the more they felt entitled to dominate. I enjoy writing. I’m not going to call myslef a writer, but I make attempts. I probably would not have been accepted into an MFA program had I tried, but I would never have tried after meeting the MFA students I did. (For those 2 or 3 MFA students I did like, I apologize.) It sucks when someone makes generalizations, which is what the MFA students seemed to do when they monopolized discussions as if us plain old MA students had nothing valuable to say. How can someone write effectively, persuasively, beautifully if they never stop to listen?
What about the individual experience? Everyone seems very caught up with wether an MFA is right for the collective burgeoning writer. How can anyone possibly answer the question to MFA or not to MFA, aside from the writer themselves? If you don’t know why or how the experience might prove valuable, perhaps you already have your answer.
I waited many years until I was ready to commit to an MFA, and I personally got a tremendous amount out of the program. None of the speculations on wether it is actually a worthwhile academic pursuit seem to matter.
I found what I needed: Structure, a community, exposure to new and exciting writing (including that of my peers and now very close friends and supporters). I made connections with other human beings, I had time to step out of my own head. I shared ideas and was inspired. That was probably the most important aspect of my time there.
Did I think workshop was a bit ridiculous at times? Absolutely.
Writing is so private, insular and well, lonely. And after my degree, I still have plenty of time to work on my own. Nobody needs an MFA. The experience is entirely personal. I went in knowing what I wanted. I got that and more.
P.S. I got my agent – who is getting my my book published (which was read by trusted MFA colleagues) through my professor. So that was nice.
“one of the faults of MFA Programs is that it has helped teach technique so well and made so many good writers that we simply can’t read them all. It’s not that the Program has made us worst writers, it’s that it’s made us so good it’s impossible to tell who is bad anymore.”
You just made my day. 🙂
Good discussion. I attended a writing festival at Iowa one summer and met with someone who taught there –my mentor. He wad rather emphatic that I do not go there. He spoke to me quietly on what I should do as a writer. It was not pursue a MFA especially here. He called it the factory.He said I had talent and not to fuck it up. I was shocked because going to Iowa was a big dream for me. I’m glad he told me all that. He’s still my mentor and that was several years ago.
*was (sorry, typing on a phone )
In addition to the above, I can only say –to each his own.
As a philosophy graduate, I can’t help but see a mass commercialization of the “MFA industry.” I think I’ll just continue to make espresso drinks during the day, saunter back to my tiny studio at night, and further explore my self-loathing and questionable literary talent. At least I’ll save a couple thousand.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.