Ah finally! After the weak and weirdly constructed assaults on literature by Lee Siegel and Philip Roth, finally I read a critique of modern publishing I can pass on as insightful rather than insipid.
Anis Shivani skewers the MFA system*, a major player in the “writer as consumer” model that’s turning publishing into a pyramid scheme. But, Shivani’s beef isn’t with the upturning of the business model of publishing, but with the institutional dynamics that select for mediocrity:
The ascent of creative writing programs means that few with critical ability have any incentive to rock the boat–awards and jobs may be held back in retaliation. The writing programs embody a philosophy of neutered multiculturalism/political correctness; as long as writers play by the rules (no threatening history or politics), there’s no incentive to call them out. (A politically fecund multiculturalism–very desirable in this time of xenophobia–is the farthest thing from the minds of the official arbiters: such writing would be deemed “dangerous,” and never have a chance against the mediocrities.)
The MFA writing system, with its mechanisms of circulating popularity and fashionableness, leans heavily on the easily imitable. Cloying writers like Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Aimee Bender, and Charles D’Ambrosio are held up as models of good writing, because they’re easy enough to copy. And copied they are, in tens of thousands of stories manufactured in workshops.
The rest of the critique, including Shivani’s list of the Top 15 Most Overrated American Writers, is equally scathing, and equally valuable for anyone who wants to understand how the publishing biz is eating itself alive.
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* I was well on my way to the MFA track when I transferred from WVSU to UVA, which would not accept my writing transfers as major credit, forcing me to choose a new major. This happenstance may have scuttled, or hindered, my chances of being published, but in retrospect I am glad to have had years of outward-looking experience in the military and intelligence communities rather than years in a literary Hall of Mirrors.
Let me start by saying that I am not all head-over-heels for Inception the way everyone else seems to be. I thought it was an intriguing idea, but not as mind-bendingly original as it has been hyped. Plus, I felt the director (and his screenplay doctors) got a little sloppy with it at the end.
A three-legged table is vastly more stable
yest. (1) The foam, spume, or flower of beer in fermentation; barm.
by Samuel Johnson (1755), ed. E. L. McAdam and George Milne (1963).
The War of 1812 is one of America’s least known wars and yet the conflict in which we truly established our place as an independent actor on the world stage. (There really should be more historical fiction written about this war!)
I first became aware of the slippage of the idea of a mash-up when I found songs on the iTunes store identified as “mash-ups” which were in fact merely remakes or sample-derived songs. 
author Justin Cronin had only contained his characterization of Meyers-esque pseudo-vampire fiction as “the vampire industrial complex” I would have been pleased enough to pass it on to you guys.
The literary world is abuzz with news that author Anne Rice has abandoned Christianity. In the name of Christ. Or something like that.
When I first read the headline of the latest salivation for Tom McCarthy’s eagerly awaited novel, 
, I rolled my eyes: “