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The Real Reason We Hate MFAs

Writing can’t be taught, say some. Writing programs are for rich kids, say others. No and no

IN THE PARIS REVIEW this year, god of American letters Sarah Schulman said MFA writing programs disserved students if “they were of the wrong class.” Thanks to MFAs, “American literature is filled with repetition . . . there’s no concern about how this repetition undermines democracy.”

When I went to Texas in 2009 to do a master of fine arts, I knew of two or three Canadian universities with writing programs. Now there are at least forty (some of which I’ve taught in), with growing enrolments as humanities stalwarts like English Lit decline.

But boy, we love to hate the writing program. After teaching creative writing in 1965, Nelson Algren said writing students “bespeak a readiness to be cowed in return for a stall in the Establishment barn; at whatever cost in originality.”

In 1992, the critic John W. Aldridge contended that MFAs file down a writer’s vision till it’s apolitical, insipid, dealing with “small, trivial specifics, the housekeeping details of life.”

The writing’s bad, said novelist Elif Batuman in 2010, with a little xenophobia no one asked for: “I feel about it as towards new fiction from a developing nation with no literary tradition.”

In 2019, Tajja Isen questioned the MFA in these pages, and memoirist Beth Nguyen said the “typical workshop” contains “an unchecked, micro-aggressive yet forceful imbalance of power,” marred by racist assumptions.

Last year, the firebugs at Discordia Review described MFA programs........

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