So we’re sitting in class tonight and our teacher asks something like, How do you find the fiction that you read?
First, the class says _nothing_. This isn’t unusual, though. The dozen of us in class have been little more than bumps on our chairs tonight. Eventually, someone speaks up.
– I read what my teachers tell me to read.
and then
– I find books I like on Amazon and see what other people have bought.
No one says “I read the Sunday book review from the newspaper.”
No one says “I read litblogs.”
No one says “I read award-winners and nominees.”
No one says “I read the New Yorker.”
No one says “I read literary magazines.”
When I snuck into AWP last year a couple of the literary magazine folks said that MFA students wanted them to run their stories, but they didn’t want to subscribe, even read the magazines. I said bosh and poppycock. I was wrong. Sigh.
At least no one said, “I read what Oprah tells me to read.”
Ouch. Well, I guess I hope their teachers are telling to read some good shit then.
On the plus side, perhaps there’s literary inspiration to be mined from reading the backs of cereal boxes and the PennySaver.
in my program, sometimes half of class is stuff people are reading or an arguement over the stuff people are reading. if all the people who called themselves writers were readers, then a MFA would out do a MBA in the money for sure.
I’ll second that Ouch. What a nightmare.
Someone get those short-attention-span thugs some short story collections, before it’s too late.
This never fails to shock me. Just how many people seriously want to be writers but don’t really read that much. It’s the lack of curiosity. I find it completely foreign. If you don’t even care enough to read it, why write it? Why expect someone else to care?
When Christopher has taught beginner/intermediate classes in writing science fiction and fantasy, there has always been maybe one or two people reading and/or subscribing to any of the short SF magazines (which, death throes or not, are probably still more widely read than most lit zines). So it’s not just MFA students, it seems to be writing students in general.
I found the same thing, both in my MFA program at Emerson and now as a fiction editor. A significant number of writers–I won’t guess at the percentage–write and submit their work for no other reason than vanity. They want to see their names in print. But writing is a craft, and a craft must be learned.
I wonder if this goes hand-in-hand with the phenomenon of writers’ taking a workshop but offering no written feedback on others’ work week to week?
Man, that makes me want to cry. Did you shake them silly? Like nanny-shake them?
When I was in grad school–I have an MA in English Lit–nobody read seriously. They claimed not to have time. One student carried around an Anne Sexton paperback all semester. All semester! I guess it was his “i’m a poet” ornament.
Needless to say, they were were poor writers.
Wow. What a bunch of pretentious crap. Your list of “No one says” items can be summed up by the phrase, “No one lists any source that I have already decided I agree with. These are obviously the only sources that are correct.”
I can understand and agree with deriding the person who commented about only reading instructors’ reading lists but the Amazon source is superior to any of yours. It is the only one (among those that you named) that provides a democratic and open perspective.
Truly, it is boring and pedestrian to find sources whose reading suggestions you approve of so that you can rubber stamp them. If you were truly as concerned about opening oneself to interesting quality literature then you would entertain sources outside of the traditional loop.
Just because you do not understand the mathematics behind the correlational algorithm used by Amazon (and similar sources) does not mean that it is not a good way to learn about new things.
Unlike the others on this list, I’m a math and sciences guy but – crazy me – I enjoy reading books from many different genres and I intentionally look to multiple differing types of sources. I don’t doubt that there is some validity to your point but for a self proclaimed writer who is criticizing other MFA students you do a very poor job of communicating it.