Hello Armand, I wandered back here after you commented on my blog.

Learning to write and learning to lit-crit are different animals. We got two years to work on our writing, not to smoke our theoretical cigars and pontificate. Whenever our classes slipped into lit-crit mode — and they did far too often — I’d just start writing in my notebook, working on my own stuff.

At best it bored me. At worst, it felt like a waste of time and money.

Of course you can learn from other writers’ choices. But what I wanted to learn was the craft that glued their work together, not the symbolism that could be pulled out of any old ass.

Thanks very much for being a reader- without avid readers, writers are nothing!

As for going into more detail on the topic of the connection between contemporary writing and old literature, I’m going to beg off that duty for just right now. I think it’s taking us kind of far off the original topic of my post- maybe we could jointly address it in a future post?

Finally, I hope (ahem) Gordon puts up a new posting; it’s been a while.

Armand

-gordon

Tee hee.

I did mention on my blog centuries ago that I thought your point on why overly theoretical lit crit may not be the best sort of approach to texts in a MFA programme. (I especially like it because I hate lit theory.) That makes sense to me. I’m looking forward to seeing you expand on the points with which I disagree because I’d really like to get a better idea of where you’re coming from.

Thank you both for your thought-provoking feedback. I’m glad we all found a unique path to our writing.

also @ Imani-

Thanks for bringing your viewpoint to the fore! I think you and I would probably disagree on some of the fundamentals as to why people read and write, and it would make for some very interesting correspondence, so I hope you keep coming back. I would be very interested in discovering how your MFA and writing experiences evolved.

also @ Todd,

in regard to this:

“And you really had to complete a novel in 2 years to complete your MFA? This is hard to for me to imagine, but I tend to write slowly.”

There was no requirement that I complete a novel (or in my case, a book of short stories) in the time I was at grad school- if I gave that impression, then I apologize. I think that my requirement was something like 80 pages, minimum.

What I was trying to get at is the notion that, for many of us, an MFA program is a golden time for crafting as much of a book as possible.

thanks again-

Armand

And you really had to complete a novel in 2 years to complete your MFA? This is hard to for me to imagine, but I tend to write slowly.

A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world. Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child’s scrawl on the fence, and the crank’s message in the market place.

I assume a major reason one enters an MFA programme is to improve one’s craft, yes? It’s not to ape another style. What possible advantage could books written in the past 50 years have over the “archaic” texts besides more familiar spelling? Seriously. If the answer has something to do with more ready evidence of what’s currently “marketable” I will slink back to my blog, crying quietly.

I do see your point about reading older writers. I didn’t do a very good job of addressing that particular part of the topic because it was more a sidebar issue to the greater topic of Lit Crit courses.

As for me- I still humbly disagree with the notion that MFA writers must read the classics in an academic setting.

Reading the classics seems like an issue of interest to many people. If you write up a post on it, I’d be excited to read it.

thanks-

Armand