12 ms·

An excellent article from a magazine known for excellent journalism and mediocre fiction and poetry. I wasn't expecting a read this good. I personally don't th

An excellent article from a magazine known for excellent journalism and mediocre fiction and poetry. I wasn't expecting a read this good. I personally don't think creative writing is something that college teaching is suited for. A few courses, maybe, but a full major in creative writing is not only a risk, it is largely a waste of class time for the student. Since most of a creative writing major is just plain writing, followed by critique, the classroom rarely adds more than what students could get in a focused extracurricular group.

brandnewlow 17y ago
I took a creative writing class in college. The chief benefit was reading my story aloud to a room of peers and a professor who is herself a renowned novelist (Joyce Carol Oates) and having them tell me my story wasn't crap and I should try writing another one. That's what I got out of my class, the encouragement to keep at it. Doing everything alone and on your own means you don't always get the feedback you need to do your best work.
gabrielroth 17y ago
Ah yes, all that mediocre fiction by Philip Roth, John Updike, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Vladimir Nabokov, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith ... it's surprising the New Yorker still publishes fiction, with a reputation for mediocrity like that.
- michael_dorfman 17y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. Is there any magazine that has a better reputation for fiction? The New Yorker and The Atlantic have pretty much dominated the O.Henry Awards over the past 100 years....
  - gabriel 17y ago
    The New Yorker doesn't have a good reputation for fiction, and it hasn't for a while. However, I think its lack of reputation is more about how The New Yorker isn't thought of as a place for fiction anymore: They only publish one story (compared to when they used to publish many), and their reportage is still quite good. Sure, that one story is usually by an established writer, which is also one of the most common complaints, but that story isn't going to be a fluff piece. I'm OK if The New Yorker isn't the best magazine for fiction, there are plenty of other places to find new short fiction. You just have to know where to look. BTW, I thought gabrielroth's comment was hilarious. A great response to a not so intelligent comment :)

brandnewlow 17y ago

I took a creative writing class in college. The chief benefit was reading my story aloud to a room of peers and a professor who is herself a renowned novelist (Joyce Carol Oates) and having them tell me my story wasn't crap and I should try writing another one. That's what I got out of my class, the encouragement to keep at it. Doing everything alone and on your own means you don't always get the feedback you need to do your best work.

gabrielroth 17y ago

Ah yes, all that mediocre fiction by Philip Roth, John Updike, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Vladimir Nabokov, Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith ... it's surprising the New Yorker still publishes fiction, with a reputation for mediocrity like that.

michael_dorfman 17y ago
I was wondering the same thing. Is there any magazine that has a better reputation for fiction? The New Yorker and The Atlantic have pretty much dominated the O.Henry Awards over the past 100 years....
- gabriel 17y ago
  The New Yorker doesn't have a good reputation for fiction, and it hasn't for a while. However, I think its lack of reputation is more about how The New Yorker isn't thought of as a place for fiction anymore: They only publish one story (compared to when they used to publish many), and their reportage is still quite good. Sure, that one story is usually by an established writer, which is also one of the most common complaints, but that story isn't going to be a fluff piece. I'm OK if The New Yorker isn't the best magazine for fiction, there are plenty of other places to find new short fiction. You just have to know where to look. BTW, I thought gabrielroth's comment was hilarious. A great response to a not so intelligent comment :)