Well, here it is. The most obnoxious thing I have ever read.
Wherein a man decides his fancy school’s creative writing MFA doesn’t rank well only because everybody else must be resentful of it. He also racks up bonus points for extreme condension, low-blow swipes at other schools, and some great rationalizing about student loan debt.
Choice excerpts:
This year, [Columbia] plunged down to No. 47, and is now presumed to rank behind such august institutions as Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg and Texas State University in San Marcos. This is, of course, risible.
But of course it is. I can hardly keep a straight face when I think about those schools that give students full funding to write instead of plunging them into $45,000 of debt. The poor saps! They probably can’t even figure out how to use both “august” and “risible” in the same article.
Why would you take out large student loans if you’re just going to publish a few chapbooks (with, say, a print run of 500 copies each), settle into a nice teaching residency at the University of Northern South Dakota making $35,000 a year (less, of course, your subscription to Poets & Writers), and achieve tenure based upon your trenchant stewardship of the student literary magazine?
They’re right. It wouldn’t make sense.
But—now the unspeakable heresy—what if your goal were … something else? What if your goal were to write a successful book that lots of people read?
That is heresy. Surely no one at any MFA program other than Columbia ever thinks of being a successful writer or publishing books. Most MFA students are there just because they heard the writing program has better parties than the education department.
The notion that a sign of good writing could be something other than an offer of assistant professorship at Possum Grape Community College approaches a Lovecraftian unthinkability for these people.
These people. Their imaginations are so small they cannot even dream. They’re too busy doing the dishonorable task of teaching community college. All of them!
AT LEAST, you’d hope, such a self-serving rant would come from a giant of contemporary literature, perhaps lending the critique a shred of credibility. But alas, our humble Columbia alum… writes zombie books. Really.
This is, of course, risible.
