MFA vs NYC Part I – a Personal Response and Review

I have to admit that I started reading this book, published by n+1 Magazine, thinking I would hate it (though I’ve always liked n+1). First of all, I believe that “NYC vs MFA” is a false binary – there is no either, or, sometimes there’s both, or neither, or something in addition to…you get the point. And some of the essays were annoyingly out of touch and grating (um, people complaining about how fast they spent their quarter-of-a-million book advances…really?) but some I had some surprising “I have a lot in common with them” or “I really like these people” moments as well. The other response I’ll talk about in Part II of this post, but it has something to do with the “what else can I do?” question in regards to marketing books.

First of all, Tom Spanbauer is an amazing human, and all his little “in between” pieces (also in the “in-betweens” are writers like Meghan O’Rourke and Sloane Crosley) are worth reading and paying attention to – in some cases, more than the essays. There was also a shoutout from an Iraq war vet, Matthew Hefti, to the kind of online, friendly-to-folks-in-the-military program I taught in, National University’s MFA program, because – hey, getting an MFA from remote is hard, getting it while fighting in another country is even harder. Respect.

Eric Bennett’s “The Pyramid Scheme” contained some subject matter I’m very interested in – a bit of investigation of the Cold War era of CIA support for places like the Iowa Workshop, Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and others. I wanted to immediately have coffee with him and then read his thesis. (Is this the equivalent of an intellectual crush? An intellectual crush, then.)

Melissa Flashman’s essay, “How to Be Popular,” contained the tidbit that she had worked at Luminant briefly during the dot-com boom. Me too, I thought! I wondered if I actually worked with her? Then she became a cool-spotter with trends and then did the same with books. Much hipper than my “became a middle manager at some large software company and then quit and became a poet” trajectory. The essay is fun to read, even if you haven’t worked at Luminant or been a trend-spotter.

“Nine Lives” by Lynne Martin was one of my favorite essays, because it was so fascinating to read about the work that is involved in publicizing books. “Etsy that shit out,” she explains, because most of the people getting the publicity packets are apparently 21-year-old girls. Message received. Hey, I’m still a 12-year-old girl at heart – I like stickers and clever packaging/stationary and pens that smell like cupcakes, so, I think “Etsy that shit out” is a good strategy. (Separately, but relatedly, there is another essay about a writer who, during her spare moments of boredom during her MFA, put some cards she had made in her downtime up on Etsy and got an order of 16,000 from Anthropologie. So, you know, that’s how she’s paying her student loans.)

Also interesting: a surprisingly charming and self-deprecating interview with Paris Review editor Lorin Stein, and the essay by Alexander Chee. On the ick factor side: a surprisingly “I’m okay with sexual harassment in the classroom” sort of essay on Gordon Lish (balanced by Tom Spanbauer’s dry remarks right before it) which made me remember why you should never, ever sleep with power-drunk editors, publishers, or professors, no matter what they promise you, because they are creepy, creepy slimebags, and besides, what would your mother think? Or Margaret Atwood? Any time you’re tempted to sleep with anyone to get published, ladies, just think of Margaret Atwood, shaking her head at you sadly. That’s the crap that made me not want to get an MFA in the first place. (A good commentary on that specific essay here on Bookriot: http://bookriot.com/2014/03/13/seduction-mfa-gordon-lish/) Also, the word “seduction” used in the essay’s title to reference what this creepy old dude was doing with his students makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

So, the overall message on this book from me is: read it, not just because you’re irritated by all the chatter surrounding the book, but because some of the essays are lovely writing by people you’d probably enjoy talking with, who are interesting and who know the workings of the “book biz.” A pet peeve, since this book is all by and about fiction writers, was how one essayist said the “poets all go to Phd programs” and just assumed that the only people doing MFAs were fiction writers, not poets or creative-non-fic. So, that seemed a little like, did you ignore half of your classmates at your program? Hello? Another surprise: though I’ve never lived in NYC and have an MFA and have taught in an MFA program, I identified much more strongly with the essays on the NYC side of the book than the MFA side. I like their energy, their sense of industry. Which I’ll talk about in Part II in my next post…