Customer Reviews

The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing

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I hardly thought that bold, broadly accessible, culturally significant literary scholarship was being produced anymore, but Mark McGurl has proven me wrong with "The Program Era." Ranging widely through a variety of authors and their alma maters (most notably Iowa in the '50s and Stanford in the '60s), McGurl's book makes an excellent case that postwar American fiction has to be understood in its institutional -- that is, academic -- context, and his is the first discussion of MFA programs that really transcends the sterile pro-con debates on the subject.

McGurl moves past the question of whether writing should be taught to the fact that it is taught, and he challenges a lot of romantic ideas about creativity and productivity in a discussion that ranges from Thomas Wolfe to Ken Kesey, from Flannery O'Connor's apprentice stories to Gordon Lish's grammar textbook. Whether in his discussion of the "aesthetics of shame" in O'Connor or the class anxieties of minimalist writers, McGurl reads fiction from sharp angles. He is a great close critic when he wants to be, but he never loses sight of the broader picture, linking the development of the MFA with broader currents in progressive education and the "creative economy." He also writes prose of amazing clarity for an English professor, and even makes a few charming jokes at his own expense. It's hard for me to say what the PhDs will make of all this, but I'd call this essential reading for any MFA student wanting to understand his or her work in the broader context of American higher ed after World War II.

I bought this book as a must for my research I'm doing on contemporary fiction. I never thought it would be this informed, comprehensive, wide in range and scope but also capable of keeping the micro level in focus, and on top of it, most entertaining. If you care about contemporary fiction and the develpment that lead to its current state, no matter whether you are PhD or MFA, you simply can't miss this one. It's the most intelligent scholarship I have read in quite some time. After all those boring and out-of-touch theoretical pieces going around the subject, this really feels like a breath of fresh air.

"The Program Era" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor McGurl's book interview ran here as cover feature on September 7, 2009.