MFA Pros(e)

When I broke the news to my extended family that I’d chosen to major in Philosophy for my undergraduate education, I was met with the resounding question, “And what will you do with that?” which I’m still asked today as my graduation date looms over my shoulder in May.

Thanksgivings have since been scripted around my career post-graduation, but sometimes I’ll improvise, switching out “writer” for “editor” or mentioning Vogue instead of The New Yorker. I’ve found, though, that the real crowd pleaser is grad school. The stability that higher academia promises seems to reassure them, and they like hearing names of Ivy League universities, and those adjacent, when I list the programs I’ve been looking at. This is despite their not knowing who George Saunders is or that the University of Iowa managed to fashion a reputation for itself as having the best MFA program in creative writing, rather than one of the Ivies.

But, just like the workshop setting, this praise is followed by questions, criticisms, and doubts that still press them. “And after that?” I’ll put in an application to McDonald’s or something, I don’t know.

Recently, though, I have been asking myself what I’ll do after graduation. I didn’t apply to grad school this year in lieu of working on my thesis, etc. I’ve been telling myself I’ll apply next fall, during the time I have the year off. I’ve also been seeing the discourse resurfacing about the so-called and so-dreaded “MFA prose” that has surfaced my own doubts.

I knew I wanted to apply to grad school since my freshman year of undergrad. Mainly because I wasn’t able to go out of state like I’d wanted, but also because I wanted to study at Syracuse’s writing program with Mona Awad (at the time I had just finished reading Bunny). I’ll admit, too, that I didn’t feel challenged enough in the workshop classes I was taking. I’ve always been more interested in writing at the line level—how each word sits next to its predecessor. Maybe that’s why I’ve always felt drawn to the work of an editor, which you don’t need an MFA for. But I always craved a setting where everyone else felt the same as I do about the placement of commas, the count of syllables, combing a sentence over and over until, finally, it just clicks.

The Substack articles, though. The Substack articles have been getting to my head, I think. Saying things like, “The MFA Program has ruined contemporary literature.” / “Can anyone name an author today that the cohesive population is reading? You can’t.” / “Notice how all contemporary prose sounds the same?”

And, like, yeah. I see your point. Literary fiction isn’t doing as well as it was; not every contemporary novel I’ve read has been a standout, and other than maybe Sally Rooney or Ottessa Moshfegh, you can’t really mention a contemporary novelist to someone and expect them not to ask, “Who?”

At the same time, though, the MFA program seems to be the lifeboat sustaining literary fiction. I’m not surprised that there’s no contemporary author read by the general population. Is there even a TV show that is? And I’m sure that the declining rates in literacy have nothing whatsoever to do with contemporary literature’s ruin either.

I still have doubts, though. About the prose. Always about the prose. Because I can see where David Foster Wallace and these Substack authors are coming from. Flat. Overwritten. Style over substance. I’ve read books that have been exactly what Wallace et al. are describing, and you probably have too.

Of course, I can’t say for certain that the MFA Program workshops their candidates’ writing style into one uniform model. I’ve never been to one. But there are, still, many contemporary writers who came out of the MFA Program with their own, distinct voices, despite Wallace’s criticisms (Ling Ma, Alexandra Kleeman, Melissa Broder).

This is not to be a defense for the Institution, though. The Writing Workshop has its own set of problems, as well as academia as a whole. But, I think, it’s worthwhile to step back and consider the multiple factors playing a role in “Contemporary Literature’s Ruin” before pinning all the blame on a single entity.

All that to say, I already have my supplements ready for my application to Syracuse in the fall. 

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