A review by imrogers
The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl
3.0
Lots of Goodreads reviewers smarter than me have written much better explanations of why this book on a VERY important topic ultimately falters. Yes, creative writing programs have been the dominant force in literary production since WWII, but No, I don't want to read 400 pages of Mark McGurl's dense academic prose about why this is true.
As others have pointed out, the first few chapters are more lucid in exploring literary trends (the Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Wolfe, and Flannery O'Connor discussions are ultimately quite effective as case studies for relating to academia), but in later chapters the book devolves into a disorganized mess of theory that unfortunately lacks much coherence.
You're frankly better off reading the first half of the book, then reading Elif Batuman's review essay "Get a Real Degree," which smartly and succinctly counters McGurl's more absurd claims: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree
As others have pointed out, the first few chapters are more lucid in exploring literary trends (the Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Wolfe, and Flannery O'Connor discussions are ultimately quite effective as case studies for relating to academia), but in later chapters the book devolves into a disorganized mess of theory that unfortunately lacks much coherence.
You're frankly better off reading the first half of the book, then reading Elif Batuman's review essay "Get a Real Degree," which smartly and succinctly counters McGurl's more absurd claims: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree