The narcissism of small differences

From Which Creates Better Writers: An MFA Program or New York City? by Leslie Jamison. Jamison has an artful essay and argument as a part of a review of MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction by Chad Harbach. It is also a revealing essay; discursive, referential, digressive, allusive. The focus seems on writing a witty and erudite essay rather than a witty and clear essay. All that said, there are interesting insights and fine turns of phrase.

The central argument in the book being reviewed is whether there are two separate writing cultures, those based on the MFA programs in universities and that in New York City publishing. Jamison argues that they may be separate but they are also codependent.

Money is the crucial insight of Harbach’s original essay—a highly intelligent, sharply observed piece of writing that matters less for its claim that these two cultures exist and more for pointing out that they represent the two major means by which contemporary American writing is funded.

As with so many binaries, however, Harbach’s is ultimately more useful in its dismantling than its original formulation. Insofar as it maps a set of tangled distinctions between two highly privileged communities, its rigorous pursuit can start to feel like a narcissism of small differences.

The striking thing to me is that both in the original book and in the review, there is agreement that there are two cultures and that the important bifurcation is between academia and publishing (MFA vs. NYC). I would argue that there are three cultures - academia who provide a financial support safety net, NYC publishing which provide episodic access to a larger public, and then the reading public itself. I would also argue that the biggest divide by far is between the academia publishing complex and everyone else.

To what extent is it reasonable to believe that someone steeped in the ethos of academia and Big Blue NYC is reflective of the audiences for whom they putatively are writing, i.e. the other 110 million working households in the US? It is certainly not impossible, but it is also not likely. If they don't know how the other half lives, or really the other 99%, how can they write in a fashion that is relevant and appealing to them? The answer and the data seem to indicate that they can't.

The books the clerisy want to regard as important, don't sell. The books that are bought enthusiastically and in quantity by the 99% are repugnant to the clerisy. That is the tragic and unsustainable divide.

My speculation is that over the past 20-30 years, with ever expanding university budgets, there has been an emergent ecosystem for writers that, while for most not flush, has been financially tolerable. Basically the poets and authors have carved out the creative writing niche to sustain their capacity to write poetry and largely unsellable literary fiction. To some material degree they have divorced themselves from serving the interests of most readers and are now substantially writing for one another.

My speculation is also that that is about to end. For demographic, economic, and technological reasons (shrinking customer base, low ROI, and disintermediation via MOOCs and the like) we are about to see a decade of education transformation, rationalization and contraction.

The harbingers of change are there. In K-12 there is the continuing and expanding popular interest in magnet schools, charter schools, voucher programs, and home-schooling - all speaking to a declining confidence in the traditional system and therefore also a decline in support, financial and otherwise. Universities are beginning to close and consolidate at an accelerating rate, albeit initially at the lowest rungs. Discounting is rising, tuition is just beginning to fall on a selective basis.

If all this comes to pass, the creative writing academia niche will disappear and the focus will return to where it has traditionally been - writing for the common market, not just for a niche of academic readers. Some of this is captured in this whinging article from the Guardian in the UK, From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author's life? by Robert McCrum.

Jamison alludes to it but I would put it more plainly. We can speak of aesthetics and artists being true to themselves and the anguish of structural change and questions about the communal commitment to art. All good but substantially unproductive questions. Where's the money? Right now it is being extracted coercively and/or in a hidden fashion via the academy. With competition will come clarity. With the disappearance of the protected niches will come market engagement. The public will be found to be perfectly committed to art, just not the art that particular artists might wish to produce.