[Cwgrad-announcements] Interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed re: Creative Writing programs

[rrussin at ucr.edu]

Hi Chuck--

Yes, Andrew (I think) turned me on to this New Yorker piece--it's really terrific. I particularly liked the analysis of how programs have affected/been affected by multi-cultural efforts, as well as the spurious insistence in some quarters on personal "authenticity."

It's well worth reading for the whole program, actually.

Thanks!

Robin Russin
Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor
Department of Theatre
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
(951) 827-2707
(213) 949-1061 cel
robin.russin at ucr.edu

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." - William Munny in "Unforgiven," written by David Webb Peoples


---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 09:01:17 -0700
>From: cwhitney <chuck.whitney at ucr.edu>  
>Subject: Re: [Cwgrad-announcements] Interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed re: Creative Writing programs  
>To: <rrussin at ucr.edu>
>Cc: cwgrad-announcements at lists.ucr.edu
>
>   Robin:  Did you see the Louis Menand review-essay of
>   McGurl's book in the New Yorker?
>
>     http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/06/08/090608crat_atlarge_menand?currentPage=all
>
>   D. Charles Whitney, Professor & Chair
>   Department of Creative Writing, 4159 INTS
>   U. of CA, Riverside   Riverside CA 92521
>   951.827.6076     FAX 951.827.3619
>   On Jun 30, 2009, at 2:25 PM, <rrussin at ucr.edu>
>   wrote:
>
>     I won't copy the whole thing here, but a few
>     paragraphs in case you want to check it out:
>
>     By JENNIFER HOWARD
>
>     Complaints about writing programs are legion.
>     Critics — there have been many over the years
>     — tend to reach for sausage-factory imagery to
>     sum up their objections. Stuff raw writing into
>     one end, they say, and out the other comes a
>     string of literary product in whatever shape
>     happens to be in fashion. In the 1980s, for
>     instance, minimalism à la Raymond Carver was all
>     the rage, and writers who emerged from M.F.A.
>     programs were often accused of being Carver
>     wannabes. Even those who look with toleration on
>     writing programs tend to believe that you can
>     teach writers but you can't teach people how to
>     write, as the saying goes.
>
>     Enter Mark McGurl, an associate professor of
>     English at the University of California at Los
>     Angeles. McGurl comes to the defense of writing
>     programs from an unexpected angle: the literary
>     critic's corner. His new book, The Program Era:
>     Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing
>     (Harvard University Press), makes a claim that is
>     likely to surprise people on both sides of the
>     debate: "This book argues that the rise of the
>     creative-writing program stands as the most
>     important event in postwar American literary
>     history," he writes in the very first sentence.
>
>     ...
>
>     Colleagues with Ph.D.'s now come to her asking for
>     advice on how to make their nonfiction work more
>     creative, while she and others on the creative
>     side have grown comfortable publishing more
>     academic papers, in part because they too must
>     satisfy tenure requirements. "Everybody's
>     influencing everybody else," Pollack reports. In
>     graduate classes, "there's a lot of mingling going
>     on" between critics and creative writers.
>
>     If McGurl is living proof that a literary critic
>     — "a museless pedant," as he jokingly says in
>     The Program Era — can treat creative-writing
>     programs with respect, even admiration, is the
>     world ready to set aside the sausage-factory
>     debate? The university may be the best place to
>     move that conversation forward. Writing and
>     publishing have grown decentralized as the power
>     of New York wanes. Pollack hopes that more people
>     will give creative-writing programs credit for
>     "keeping the flame alive a little bit" and back
>     off the attack. "How can it hurt the world if
>     there are as many people as possible spending two
>     years reading and writing?" she asks. "What is the
>     harm of that?"
>
>     Robin Russin
>     Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor
>     Department of Theatre
>     University of California, Riverside
>     Riverside, CA 92521
>     (951) 827-2707
>     (213) 949-1061 cel
>     robin.russin at ucr.edu
>
>     "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." - William
>     Munny in "Unforgiven," written by David Webb
>     Peoples
>
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