A review by corey
MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction by Chad Harbach
4.0
"Well that's the strangest thing about this emotion
Even knowing our chances are small
We line up at the gate with our tickets
Thinking somehow we're different
I mean, after all..." - Brad Paisley
So, something you probably shouldn't do if you're currently paying a ridiculous sum of money to study creative writing at an undergraduate program is read this book. In fact, if you're a young person with aspirations of writing for publication, yeah, you should probably not read this book. Not because the essays aren't good, some of them--especially the ones written by Emily Gould, Keith Gessen, and Eli S. Evans--are fantastic. But you shouldn't read these essays because each one seems to take a giant shit inside of your heart.
Apparently, professional writers, with or without MFAs, seem to be pretty miserable as a whole. There's a lot of ostensible despairing that goes on in these essays. Writers have no money. This is one thing that most of the anthologized writers want you to know. Part of this, at least in several of the stories told in this collection, has to do with poor financial management. But mostly, it has to do with the fact that there's not a whole lot of money in writing these days (if there ever really was). If you go the MFA route and secure a job as a professor, great, but, at least according to the accounts disclosed here, you'll have no time to write (or if you do have time to write, it's because you suck as a professor). And then there are the two excruciatingly long critical theory essays responding to Mark McGurl's "The Program Era," both of which conclude that writing is an inherently shameful practice, so even if you write simply because you like doing it, even if you are compelled to do it by an Oatesian graphomania, with no professional aspirations, you're still a narcissist and an elitist.
So the odds are against you making it as a writer, period. As George Saunders says, there's no reason to think getting an MFA will make you a better writer. And yet not getting an MFA, as many others say, might make you less attractive to agents and publishers. And if you don't get an MFA, you should certainly live in NYC, because that's how you make connections without a degree. Except have you seen the rents for a studio apartment in Manhattan? Even Brooklyn is no longer doable for most people. And it's all the less doable because, as we're reminded in nearly every essay, to be a writer is to be without money.
But I want to be a writer. And I want to be published. I don't have to make much money off it, though money would be nice. Like all of the people who were essentially sneered at in the essay about Amazon's writing contest, writing is one of the only things I think I may be fit to do. I've read countless novels, I've read rigid critical theory, I've attended readings and written every day and done all of the stuff you're supposed to do. And so I want to be a writer. But so do the other 20 kids in my undergraduate workshop. The other day this girl wrote a story about a father who kidnaps his daughter after he's denied custody of her. It was pretty fucking good.
Even knowing our chances are small
We line up at the gate with our tickets
Thinking somehow we're different
I mean, after all..." - Brad Paisley
So, something you probably shouldn't do if you're currently paying a ridiculous sum of money to study creative writing at an undergraduate program is read this book. In fact, if you're a young person with aspirations of writing for publication, yeah, you should probably not read this book. Not because the essays aren't good, some of them--especially the ones written by Emily Gould, Keith Gessen, and Eli S. Evans--are fantastic. But you shouldn't read these essays because each one seems to take a giant shit inside of your heart.
Apparently, professional writers, with or without MFAs, seem to be pretty miserable as a whole. There's a lot of ostensible despairing that goes on in these essays. Writers have no money. This is one thing that most of the anthologized writers want you to know. Part of this, at least in several of the stories told in this collection, has to do with poor financial management. But mostly, it has to do with the fact that there's not a whole lot of money in writing these days (if there ever really was). If you go the MFA route and secure a job as a professor, great, but, at least according to the accounts disclosed here, you'll have no time to write (or if you do have time to write, it's because you suck as a professor). And then there are the two excruciatingly long critical theory essays responding to Mark McGurl's "The Program Era," both of which conclude that writing is an inherently shameful practice, so even if you write simply because you like doing it, even if you are compelled to do it by an Oatesian graphomania, with no professional aspirations, you're still a narcissist and an elitist.
So the odds are against you making it as a writer, period. As George Saunders says, there's no reason to think getting an MFA will make you a better writer. And yet not getting an MFA, as many others say, might make you less attractive to agents and publishers. And if you don't get an MFA, you should certainly live in NYC, because that's how you make connections without a degree. Except have you seen the rents for a studio apartment in Manhattan? Even Brooklyn is no longer doable for most people. And it's all the less doable because, as we're reminded in nearly every essay, to be a writer is to be without money.
But I want to be a writer. And I want to be published. I don't have to make much money off it, though money would be nice. Like all of the people who were essentially sneered at in the essay about Amazon's writing contest, writing is one of the only things I think I may be fit to do. I've read countless novels, I've read rigid critical theory, I've attended readings and written every day and done all of the stuff you're supposed to do. And so I want to be a writer. But so do the other 20 kids in my undergraduate workshop. The other day this girl wrote a story about a father who kidnaps his daughter after he's denied custody of her. It was pretty fucking good.