Writing: The Next Generation
Recently I met a guy who was getting his PhD in creative writing. I had to ask him to repeat himself, because I thought I had misheard. He said it again. “They’re offering doctorates for that now?” I wondered aloud, slightly amazed. As if I didn’t feel inadequate enough, high school graduate that I am. Watching the horizons of my own educational relativity (and professional possibility) recede further into nothingness is never pleasant. Not only are there PhD programs in creative writing, he told me, but apparently they’re spreading like so much ivy across the walls of academia.
There are so many places I could go with this information I don’t know where to begin. I could say that creative writing doctorates are nothing but a market response to the deflation and devaluation of the MFA (way too much supply, way too little demand). I could point out that the luxury consumer education racket is just that, a racket, and that by accepting the legitimacy of it we are allowing big business to game the corporative of authorship itself. I could point out that the rise and dominance of MFA programs is no different from the rise of MBA programs through the 1980s; both are business degrees. I could also conjecture that the current MFA bubble has only been made possible by the MBA generation; that without those suits creating the conditions of a bull market, cheap debt and plentiful cash, there never would have been an MFA boom to begin with.
Don’t think I’m bashing MFAs or PhDs here. I like the trend, because a country that graduates more MFAs than MBAs (as we began doing around 2002) is a country that is deliriously rich and confident, and those are nothing to be ashamed of. But I have my reservations, and some caveats.
The rise of the MFA is a far more decadent development than the flood of MBAs of the Reagan decade, and just as the children of Betty Friedan’s problem-with-no-name grew up to explode the repression of Eisenhower America in the glorious 60s, so too will the MFA generation give rise to a far more savvy, rebellious, and hopefully creative generation. And just as with every previous rebellion, the hip parents will be shocked, scandalized, and outraged by the youth. We believe we have outsmarted and co-opted every avenue of possible rebellion, and history has shown us that is always when the time is ripe for another one. When it happens we will look back on the previous decades as a golden age, just as every other generation has done.
Getting back to my aspiring doctor, this brought up two immediate thoughts. First, who conferred the first creative writing PhD, and what were his/her credentials? This puzzles me. Who is qualified to teach the first doctorate in a particular field? The only truly qualified people would not have earned PhDs in writing, since none existed that I am aware of. Even among the greats–Vonnegut, Hemingway, Twain, Porter, Powell–who would have qualified? Who can confer a degree above his or her own? (That is not a rhetorical question, I really want to know.)
Second, I thought about the future. What comes next? Really, what comes after a doctorate in creative writing? I think I have the answer–as readers of this space know, whether it’s how to be authentic, or what to do about the problem of ambition, or how to save big publishers, Oprah, or the best accessories to pair with epaulets–I’m always trying to help. So here’s where I think we need to go after every MFA has been upsold to a PhD, and the market for luxury degrees has finally begun to stagnate.
In order to future-proof the writing degree we will have to break it into parts. In the future you will have doctors of grammar, doctors of metaphor and analogy, doctors of punctuation, doctors of dialog, etc. When those run out, schools can take a page from Freemasonry and develop degrees of aptitude; you could therefore be a 33rd Degree Grand Wizard of Hyphenation, for example. It’s like those characters on Star Trek: just put some blobs of latex at different spots–ridges over the eyebrows, horns on the chin–have them all speak perfect English and call them different species.
Schools could offer limited-edition degrees, co-branded and sponsored by various businesses. “Oooh, you got the Princeton-Random House-Eddie Bauer Deluxe Xtreme Off-Road Black Leather Doctorate of Intergalactic Grammatics with built-in GPS. Lucky bastard!” You get the idea.
From there, once all those options are exhausted, there will be only one choice left: to offer a doctorate program of the writing degrees themselves. You will be able to study the history and evolution of creative writing programs, and be conversant in all of them. And won’t you be the life of the party then.
—
[...] My new Naked Opinion is up at the Outsider Writers site at long last. It’s very fun. Please click here to check it out. [...]
Believe it or not, someone is now ranking said Creative Writing PhD programs:
http://sethabramson.blogspot.com/2007/12/2008-p-prelimary-reader-poll-mfa.html
Who would’ve thought Florida State U. would be tops? But I love that this lunacy has already spanned FSU-haters (see the sixth comment down).
Dear lord, Ken, that’s the scariest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks for scaring.
I want a PHD in post-centaur Bea Arthur toothpaste research writing.
Hate to pimp, but my new book How America Died actually gets a bit more seriously into the corporatization of art and how it’s making the world worse:
http://undiepress.timhallbooks.com
Pimp away! That looks like a really interesting book!
I’ve been involved with this for over a half century. I should tell my story one day. One relavant point is that I gave up a good union job on the San Francisco docks to attend all paid for M.A. in the Writing seminars at Hopkins, plus a stipend. It was the best , and the founder insisted on calling it writing instead of creative writing. Obviously if you write, you create. But even with the offer of poetry chairs at prestigious universities, I never followed that goal, but instead taught in prison programs and tutored kids. I think all academic creative departments are bogus. Universties should only archive and stay out of creative affairs. Only then will we know our true culture. The academic elite has virtually wiped out great poetry. I always regret leaving the job on the docks, which was the best job I ever had. Charles Plymell
That’s a great story, Charles, I certainly hope you put it all down some day.
This is probably going to freak you out even more, but I’m 2 months of submitting a PhD on book design. Seriously.
Ha ha, Zoe–seriously, best of luck to you! I know some of my own book designs could use a doctor…
Pretty cool post. I just found your site and wanted to say
that I’ve really liked browsing your posts. In any case
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
I’m so glad you made the oft-ignored link between cheap debt and educational indulgence.
There might have been a time when the prospect of an 80,000 price tag for a degree led some to really REALLY contemplate their literary futures. Not so with the generation of student loans in such abundance that kids use the leftovers to fly to Cancun. get it now, worry about the practicality later. And the MFA mills will fill those classrooms, and in a sense self perpetuate the need for themselves.
This is maybe my favorite post from Tim to date.
He’s cocky, but – so help me Jesus, he actually thinks. Thinks! And paradoxically he thinks about things other than himself!
Sorry you have those regrets, Charles, but I bet they would be worse if you’d have gone inside academia and taken one of those chairs.