Remember when I went after Mark McGurl, author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing? I quoted Charles McGrath’s citation of a cryptic sentence from the book, and went to town on it here.
But note the updated correction to the piece. A reader, this morning, pointed out in the comment thread that McGrath had gotten part of the quotation wrong.
And now I’ve heard from the author of the book himself, who points out that “what McGrath describes as a sentence is in fact only half of the sentence,” and who asks if he can send me the book, so I can judge its writing for myself.
UD‘s delighted – not merely by the prospect of receiving the book (she has more than a passing interest in creative writing programs), but also by the gallantry of its author, who responds to snarling SOS with forbearance.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:58PM
Excerpts of the book are available on the Harvard University Press website:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/MCGPRO_excerpt.pdf