In Defense of MFA Programs
by Rick Mulkey
If you’ve read a couple of national newspapers and magazines
lately you may have noticed that the season of MFA bashing is upon us once
again. Since the inception of MFA writing programs, one author or another periodically
bemoans how these programs are of no use to writers, or fail writers in one
form or another. The arguments usually made include something about the ways
writers graduating from MFA programs lack distinct voices, about the cruelty of
workshops, about the pettiness and cliquishness of writing programs, about how
the writing and literature taught in these programs doesn’t fit what agents are
looking for in today’s commercial marketplace, and a myriad of other items. Let
me be clear, these individuals have every right to make complaints and write
and say what they want. But to be honest, I’ve never understood this
handwringing about graduate writing programs.
While these concerns may exist in other artistic fields, I
can’t recall a single article about the ways in which the academic study of
music or visual art has led to the development of inferior musicians or
sculptors. Great artists and musicians have studied with mentors and teachers
for centuries, and the academic study of those artistic pursuits has existed in
colleges and universities for generations. My son, a musician who wants to work
as a studio bassist in the commercial music arena, is pursuing a degree in
music. While his intentions aren’t to be a classical performer or even a jazz
performer, I’m pleased that his training includes those areas of performance
study. While he was uncertain how the study of Bach or Coltrane might translate
to his commercial music pursuits, he recently expressed to me a gratitude for
his training in those areas, believing that his studies in classical music and
jazz music are making him a better commercial musician. Isn’t the same true for
any writer of commercial fiction who really wants to improve his or her craft?
Doesn’t the study of classic literature, contemporary literary fiction and
poetry, and the craft techniques of those works make one a better mystery
writer or science fiction writer? At the very least, I think it makes one a
better reader.
In truth, I graduated with the MFA degree, and while my
program was imperfect, as all academic programs are, it was an important, even
life changing experience for me, and I am grateful for the writers I read, met,
worked with and studied while in that program. I have no regrets. My failures
as a writer are my own, but to this day, 25 years since I completed my degree,
I’m happy to give my MFA program some of the credit for my few successes. This is
why, in part, I’ve never given much credence to the anti-MFA crowd. In fact,
I’ve never believed the arguments made by MFA detractors hold up to close
scrutiny. For instance, the often made argument about MFA graduates all
sounding the same with no distinct voice makes little sense when one considers
the variety of writers publishing today. Some of my favorite authors hold MFA
degrees, and I think any close reading of their books demonstrates that each
has his or her own voice. Would anyone argue that Denise Duhamel, Sandra
Cisneros, Albert Goldbarth, David Huddle or Ellen Bryant Voigt lack a distinct
poetic voice? Or would anyone agree that Robert Olmstead, Alyson Hagy, T.C.
Boyle, Janet Peery, Thomas E. Kennedy or Pam Durban are limited to writing the
same story in the same prose sentence?
As for the argument that there is something cruel or petty
about MFA workshops, I can honestly say that I have never, either as a student
or as a teacher, been in a workshop that was mean-spirited. I’ve certainly been
in workshops that were tough, where the critiques were not always flattering,
but the responses, even those I didn’t agree with, seemed to me honest
reactions to the work. Besides, don’t we study the craft of writing in order to
receive feedback that we hope will help us improve? Aren’t we looking for
the kind of tough line edits that fewer and fewer editors take the time to do?
Ultimately, good things often come out of these workshops. As Eric Olsen,
co-author of We Wanted to Be Writers, a
book about the Iowa MFA program, states concerning the experience of workshops:
“If you throw a lot of talented folks together in one place and give them
the freedom to work and play together, not always nicely but nicely often
enough, good things are going to happen.”
And, of course, there is the complaint that MFA programs
don’t always produce writers who go on to have successful publishing careers.
Do music schools and art schools always develop great musicians and
artists? Does the Ph.D. Physics program at Princeton only produce Nobel
Prize winning scientists? Most alumni of MFA programs don’t confuse their
MFAs with a certificate to publish. I’ve always thought that the
pursuit of the MFA degree should be done to improve one’s writing and one’s
appreciation for writing. Publishing is always going to be a matter of taste
and, to some degree, talent. Of course luck plays a part too since we all know
plenty of writers, with and without MFA degrees, who possess marginal talent or
ability, yet manage to publish successfully.
Ultimately, I can’t help but think the unfortunate truth is
we are living in a culture where anti-intellectualism reigns, and the bashing
of MFA programs has more to do with the anti-intellectualism permeating our
culture than it does with promoting serious art and thinking. There are few
places to turn in the U.S. for serious engagement with artistic and
intellectual ideas. Sure, we have book club blogs, we have Goodreads, Amazon
and the like, but these, for the most part, like Top 40 radio, are designed to
promote and praise the least offensive, least original, least demanding works. Unfortunately,
book clubs for literary fiction barely exist. Likewise, there are few outlets
for those wishing to meet and discuss their interests in contemporary poetry.
No, if I’m going to wring my hands in worry, it is going to be over the state
of publishing, the disappearance of independent bookstores, diminishing
library budgets, and the interference by politicians and corporate types with
academic freedom.
If I had my way, we’d live in a country where people gathered
in bars, cafes and town squares to recite great verse and stories, where they would
run out to buy the next Albert Goldbarth poetry collection as quickly as they
do the latest George R.R. Martin novel. But the truth is, in the U.S., this
kind of serious engagement with reading and writing happens primarily in the
classrooms and living rooms of MFA faculty, students, and alumni—and you can count
me as grateful for the existence of those programs.
*****
Bio: Rick Mulkey is the author of Toward Any
Darkness, Before the Age of Reason,Bluefield Breakdown, and
the forthcoming collection Ravenous: New and Selected Poems. He is
a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing program at Wichita State University and
currently directs and teaches in the Converse
College Low Residency MFA.