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46 The MFA Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Before moving ahead to chapters about choosing the right graduate program and the application process, I need to weigh in on a subject that gets endless attention in the blogosphere. All you need to do is Google “against MFA programs” or “anti-​ MFA” to realize how contentious this subject is. I don’t go out of my way to promote MFA programs, nor do I think everyone should go to one, but I’m quick to defend them against the anti-​ MFA contingent. If you read the arguments against getting an MFA—that they’re Ponzi schemes in which only a few people at the very top benefit while the vast majority suffer ; that MFA programs produce middle-​ of-​ the-​ road writers who are conventional, if not predictable; that thousands of MFA students graduate each year without the prospect of earning a living—you start to see a pattern in which the person complaining is positioning himself as a victim. It had never occurred to me that my MFA program was supposed to land me a job upon graduating; that’s not why I decided to get an MFA. Nor did it ever occur to me that all students graduating with an MFA would rise to the top of the pyramid. (Remember what I said about luck, chance, and serendipity being strong forces? Only the most naive would assume that two years in an MFA program would guarantee him anything.) As for the middle-​ of-​ the-​ road, bourgeois subject matter that MFA programs are supposedly mass-​ producing, does anyone really believe that once students enteran MFA program, they’re given a set of guidelines about what they should write about, or that they’re pressured by their professors to write a certain kind of story? (Flannery O’Connor, John Irving,George Saunders,Gail Godwin , and David Foster Wallace are all products of creative writing programs. Is their work so similar that you could rubberstamp it all as “workshop fiction”?) Furthermore, does anyone really believe that everyone outside of academia is writing startlinglyoriginal and radical fiction that’s not getting recognized? The person who is applying to an MFA program because he thinks it’s the golden ticket to landing a New Yorker publication and a job at an Ivy League college has a misperception of what an MFA program is all about.The person who’s afraid that an MFA program will indoctrinate him so that all he’ll be able to write afterward is the dreaded Education and the Writer 47 “workshop” story should go to a psychiatrist; he clearly needs someone , other than me, to tell him that he has the free will to make choices about the things he does. Or, if he believes that going to an MFA program will stunt his growth as a writer because it’s replacing all thewild adventures he could be having, like shooting wolves from helicopters, he shouldn’t apply to an MFA program. Many of the arguments against MFA programs ignore one basic point: No one is forcing anyone to apply! Go write your proletariat novel while working your forty-​ hour-​ a-​ week job. But don’t assume that there’s not someone in an MFA program who hasn’t already spent many years working forty-​ hour-​ a-​ week jobs and is now in an MFA program to buy valuable time to work on that great proletariat novel and to be (perhaps for the first time in her life) around other people who care deeply about literature. Furthermore, no writing professor ever tried to force me—or anyone else in class—to write like him or her. Sure, each teacher had her own aesthetic, but who doesn’t? And isn’t that the point of studying with an established writer—to see theworld of fiction writing through his or hereyes? At the end of the semester, you’re more than welcome to dismiss everything that’s been said. Perhaps the most outlandish complaints against MFA programs come from famous personalities who don’t know anything about them. Radio personality Garrison Keillor, offering advice to a would-​ be writer, says, “Skip the MFA in creative writing, Andy. It’s a scam run by English departments to fatten their coffers and doesn’t do you much good except as a social club (you can find better ones elsewhere ). You’re apt to find star faculty who never teach and a whole lot of semi-​ published writers doing...

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