Review: MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction ed. Chad Harbach

lovely cover

<< This is a picture of MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. My good friend, coworker and future publisher-of-books, Ashanti, recommended this book to me with enthusiasm. It is a collection of essays on the two main cultures of contemporary American Fiction: MFA Creative Writing programs and the publishing scene in New York City.

I agreed most with the essays that were skeptical of MFA programs and lamented the decline of traditional humanities and literature programs (like the essay from David Foster Wallace, which was also, not surprisingly, the most entertaining.) Most of the professors in the department where I got my BA were pretty traditional in their approach to literary studies, and because I had a great experience there, most of my opinions about contemporary literature/where it's going etc. stem from that.

However, I can't say I didn't enjoy literally all of the other essays. Every one has a distinct point of view, and except for a few dense academic essays near the end all have a creative and compelling narrative, which was quite fun and also not all that surprising due to the fact that many of the contributors are proud/troubled/regretful holders of MFAs. I especially loved the essay from NYC based literary agent Jim Rutman, which included the backstory about how he sold the recently released, super controversial novel Tampa told from the perspective of a teacher who seduces her teenaged students. (I read that book and didn't like it. [Ashanti liked it.])

While it doesn't actually focus on either MFA or NYC, another standout essay was "Reality Publishing" by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington. This essay compares Amazon's Breakthough Novel contest for unpublished authors to reality TV shows like American Idol and Survivor.  The way the first contest worked is that 5,000 authors submitted manuscripts to Amazon, which were then read, rated, and reviewed by Amazon top reviewers and members National Books Critics Circle. The eventual winner had his book published by Penguin and then sold and promoted on Amazon. The runners-up won vacation packages and home entertainment centers (weird.) Eventually Penguin and NBCC stepped out, but Amazon continues to run the contest every year.

I'm fascinated by reality TV and the way it is produced and edited to convey "reality" to a specific audience, the raw footage broken down and reconstructed to their desires and expectations. Basically, reality TV preys on a specific moldable, fame-seeking personality to create a successful TV show. Wellington argues that, similarly, the Breakthrough contest preyed upon the desire of desperate unpublished authors to "get their work out there", and instead of actually publishing quality books that sell (they didn't, at least not very well), Amazon used the contest to draw interest and customers to their site. "For the time being, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel seems less a promotion for the entrants than for the corporate sponsor, and the winner each year, no matter who wins the contest, is Amazon.com."

All of the essays in this collection was super interesting and fun to read right from the start, which is exactly what Ashanti told me when last week she showed me her copy that had about every one of the first 30 pages dog-eared. Unfortunately she's a slower reader than I am and hasn't finished yet ... hurry up, Ashanti or I'm going to beat you to writing the store rec! Just kidding *scared*.

Not sure yet how or if I'm going to make a rating system for this blog but MFA vs. NYC gets an .... A+/Five Stars/Thumbs Up/Yes.