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Sunday, May 07, 2006
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Inside Higher Ed... ... will probably be running a piece about the Mark Slouka/Columbia MFA mess this week. The piece may include a comment or two from UD. So it seems a good moment to say a few more things about the situation -- at Columbia and elsewhere. Yet what to say about creative writing programs -- majors in college, masters in graduate school -- that hasn’t been said already, in essays and plays and satirical novels galore? The escalating scandal of one of America’s most popular, expensive, and largely worthless forms of university activity is a matter of profuse public record by now, but no one’s doing anything about it. Instead, on a regular basis, we have what UD calls faruptions -- fine arts eruptions. These events are similar to the bimbo eruptions of Clinton’s presidency, but the explosions here involve someone -- usually a faculty member who can’t take it anymore -- erupting into print with the truth about creative writing at American colleges and universities. All of the flame throwers toss out the same incendiary material -- no standards, no content, A’s all around, cynical professors, a majority of clueless students lacking creative talent as well as straightforward writing skills. Even as it erupts, each fire is doused with the waters of compassion, as gooey creative writing faculty (usually women -- Jorie Graham’s famous for this sort of thing in regard to poetry) rush in to tell us two things: 1.) We love our students. 2.) Everyone’s got talent. There are currently ninety students working toward MFAs in fiction at Columbia University. I’d guess about ten of them should be spending their time and money doing what they’re doing. But their number will increase, as a combination of affluent parents, mercenary universities, and therapeutic rhetoric enables a growth industry in aesthetic imposture. |