English Majors: Are We Doing It Wrong?

A Deconstruction of the Anxieties Associated with English majors, Fiction Writers and Beyond

If you’re an English major, fiction writer, poetry buff, or literature lover, chances are you often encounter a dash of crippling anxiety from time to time (or perhaps that’s just me). Why? Well, I feel that over time those of the literary persuasion have gotten a bad rap. It’s become a bit of a running joke in the academic world that those who choose a life of metaphors, papers, and workshops are also choosing a life of unemployment, low-pay, and uncertainty. I have yet to meet an English major who hasn’t heard in so many words that they will not make any money and are in for a rough go once graduation hits. And in my personal experience, after listening to this lecture so many times, it becomes harder and harder not to believe the prophecy. It was this inkling fear and curiosity that lead me to this.

In his article, “The English Major’s Guide to Getting a Job,” Matthew Hall tells us all what we’re doing wrong and how we can fix it, despite the debatably awful choice made in our undergrad. There are many things wrong and ultimately anxiety-inducing within this article, but let’s just start with the title:

“The English Major’s Guide to Getting a Job”: I feel that on some level this somewhat exoticizes English majors. It kind of lumps us into this certain brand of person, particularly one that has quite a bit of trouble finding a job. Although we do obviously have some things in common, such as a love for literature and the inevitable desire to one day become authors, we are not clones.

The title is then followed by the subtitle, “What You Need to do NOW to Have a Great Life.” This begs the philosophical question, what is a great life? What’s more, am I headed for a bad one?  Plus, the urgency created with the all-caps “NOW” makes me want to get up and stress-apply to all the internships in the world because apparently the chips that I’m currently eating aren’t good enough.

After reading that inherently terrifying title, Hall launches into the actual breadth of the article. It starts off relatively well, addressing a few of the nerve-wracking aspects of being an English major (i.e. teachers with a defeatist mindset, being told that our only option is teaching, that we will never have money, etc.) that many of us can relate to. This makes me feel hopeful. Perhaps the answer to all of these fears lays head. Hall continues with “if I had known then what I know now,” which insinuates that there’s a secret and we’re not in on it. After that he dangles the six-figure income that he supposedly has. This becomes a main selling point, and is mentioned many times. I’ll admit that the materialistic capitalist inside me begins to drool a bit, since money is everything and six figures sounds pretty nice. Maybe this will be worth it. Maybe this is what I, the useless English major, actually need.

But, surprise! “The English Major’s Guide to Getting a Job” is not only the title of this article (blurb, propaganda? The jury is out.) But also the title of his book, complete with a brief list of what you can learn if you buy his book such as: what undergrads need to be doing to secure the right job (and apparently it’s not an internship) and “the 7 biggest sins English majors commit that make finding a job impossible when they graduate.” I suppose this is probably a pretty good marketing strategy (but how would I know? I’m just an English major). Not revealing all of the actual secrets, making us want more, and so on. But in doing so Hall does nothing but reinforce all of the negative feelings surrounding the English major mentioned in the first paragraph. Then, he goes on to make it a bit worse by essentially saying “Hey, yeah…you are ill equipped for the real world and your major taught you nothing and this is why you need this book.”

I’m sure this guy probably feels like he’s helping us out. Or, maybe he just knows how terrible anxious we are and was smart enough to capitalize on that. Well played, Mr. Hall, well-played. I’ll admit that for a split second I did consider buying your book. However, in the next split second I realized that in doing that, I would become part of the problem, just like the book itself. It’s a perpetuation of the negative stereotypes surrounding English majors and all worries we must encounter because of them. So thanks, Mr. Hall. Thanks for nothing.

However, it appears that not all hope is lost. According to author, USA today columnist and “the country’s leading small-business expert” Steve Strauss, English majors could be a lot more lucrative than we think. In his article “Why I Hire English Majors,” Strauss goes on to commend those studying English on their intelligence, boldness and writing ability. We’re also incredibly easy to work with and considered “interesting,” “well-spoken” and “pleasant to be around.” Go us! And all without having read Matthew Hall’s book. So maybe, just maybe, we can get a job. No manual required. 

-Shelby Heinrich

This Week in Writing

• On March 28^th, Barry Harbaugh wrote “Yes, Book Editors Edit,” his response to the buzzing essay collection “MFA vs NYC.” The collection, published by n+1, features work from writers, professors, publicists, agents—but no book editors.
• Linton Weeks at NPR has written an essay titled “Vladimir Putin is Right Out Of A Russian Novel.” In the piece, Weeks posits that Putin, in his reign, “has chosen [to follow] the Dostoevskian tradition.”
• A printed edition of Wikipedia is in the works—and it would span more than one million pages in total. Seems like a worthless idea to me. Listen to NPR's talking points (3/30) here.
• On April 1^st, Gmail celebrated its 10 year anniversary. Here, Time's Harry McCracken rehashes the service's revolutionary history.
• In The Believer's March/April issue, Anisse Gross interviews filmmaker/screenwriter Mary Harron about the role of women in film. Gross discusses her writing process and her views of modern feminism. Gross wrote and directed several films, including I Shot Andy Warhol, and American Psycho.
• The Boston Review posted “Cloud of Mexico Pork” this week (4/1), a poem from Robert Pinksy. The piece is made up of a list of “trigger words” which government surveillance teams use to monitor citizens' web searches.
• The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum explores the ethics behind TV writing in her piece “The Great Divide” (4/3). The article focuses on the polarizing humor of “All in the Family,” recalling: “One side felt that the show satirized bigotry; the other argued that it was bigotry, and that all those vaudevillian yuks and awws were merely camouflage for Archie’s ugly words.” Nussbaum's piece also questions the show's impact on modern sitcom writing.   

~Sophie Opich

Peter Turchi on MFA Programs

Here's an interview with Peter Turchi, Director of the Piper Center for Creative Writing and ASU's MFA program. So, my boss. And someone who knows a lot about writing, teaching and the MFA for writers.

"But here’s the truth: I think any writer should go to the best program that will accept him or her, regardless of format or geographical location. The quality of the education trumps everything else. The great challenge, of course, is to recognize what makes a good MFA program, or a great one."

One Writer's Life

I've been reading this 2009 commencement address at the Whidbey Writer's Workshop from Tess Gallagher. Gallagher apparently inquired about what the class might like to hear and "...was told that perhaps a few practical survival tips would be helpful." Thus charged, she launched into a description of an artist's life filled with dedication, sacrifice and diligence. And subterfuge. There is this account of a conspiracy between her and her late husband, short-story writer Raymond Carver, to get their writing done:

"I’ll offer one example to encourage your ability to dissemble and to create time in simple ways. At the holidays in Syracuse, N.Y. in 1984, I suggested to Raymond Carver, my late husband, that we tell everyone we were going away. We would then not have to accept invitations and be fully engaged with other people’s households, especially unruly children. After we had announced we were going away, I proposed we would just not go away. We could simply hide out in our house and get our writing done, saving the expense and inconvenience of travel. This worked fine until someone spotted Ray bringing in the mail. He managed to wave them off, saying he’d forgotten something and would soon be away again. We drew the blinds and hunkered down."

If you've read about Gallagher recently it's probably because of her status as Carver's widow, speaking out for his work. But now she speaks for herself, invoking Carver only as part of a writing life that was concerned with her own work and endeavors. So many writers writing or blogging now seem devoted to debating the Kindle or obsessed with marketing (I'm counting myself here as well), so it's good to read a message from someone who was poor sometimes, who was blocked sometimes, and who had a husband die at 50, but was happy in the fact she chose words as her life.

Drawn and Quartered

The literary journal and academic publishing community is shocked this week about news concerning one of its most venerable members, the literary journal TriQuarterly.

What exactly is happening to TriQuarterly? It depends on whom you ask. Let’s start with this press release by Northwestern University, a mastery of avoidance and euphemism even in the history of things like press releases. Somewhere in all the gobbly-gook are some lines about TriQuarterly stopping print production and “transferring” online.

More of the real story appeared days later in The Chronicle of Higher Education which announced that the award winning journal - whose excellence has been mentioned as lately as June in this article from the Chicago Tribune – would cease to exist. Its staff would be fired and a new journal named TriQuarterly Online would take its place, run by the students of the MFA program at Northwestern.

While I’m glad that the students at Northwestern are going to edit a journal, the idea of killing the old TriQuarterly to make way for this new enterprise is embarrassing to a school with a reputation like Northwestern’s. It is precisely the kind of lead-headed thinking that plagues the publishing and magazine industry right now. If you were to go out to Alaska and kill all the bald eagles because they were eating endangered salmon, you would be following this kind of thinking. Because a student-run journal and an editorial voice like TriQuarterly are different animals.

It used to be in publishing that an editor would allow a writer to develop his style and technique over time. How many of us have read Soldier’s Pay, the first book by Faulkner? But plenty of us have read The Sound and Fury or As I Lay Dying. That is because book editors were willing to give him a chance to develop himself as a writer. In this climate of conglomerate bottom-line-oriented publishing, these editors don't exist anymore. Everyone is looking for the next chart topper, the next Oprah book, the next whatever.

Literary journals are now the crucibles for the raw metal of the next generation of writers. And while excellent journals like Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review and (ahem) HFR show the strength of student-run journals, the literary world would be much poorer without the curative voices of the Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and well…TriQuarterly. These editors work hard to make sure that a high standard is held for content and solicitation, and their magazines have risen in stature because of it.

But stature in the literary community didn’t save TriQuarterly, even though one editor has been at the magazine for 30 years. That’s a lot to throw away, for reasons that seem indecipherable unless they were to help keep the bottom line at the university, and if that’s true then maybe there isn’t any difference between large universities and large companies. And the literary world will be poorer because of it.

Why Do You Do It?

I’ve been rereading Jonathan Franzen’s essay “Why Bother?” in his collection How To Be Alone. I’d specifically picked it up again because I’ve been asking myself again why I want to write. Despite the increasing proliferation of MFA programs and conferences, it’s a profession that seems to promise obscurity and a second, ‘real’ job to most who attempt it. In fact, you could argue that MFAs and conferences have made a life in writing more difficult as everyone struggles to make their voice heard despite the ocean of people who call themselves writers. What’s one more drop in this sea? Why struggle forward in this calling when the future is so uncertain?

The answer for me may be partially in this essay. Franzen talks to Shirley Brice Heath, now of Brown University, about how people grow up to become readers. Heath says that for most people having one or more parents that read is enough to encourage a life-long passion for reading. But for others (the so-called social-isolate reader), the child feels himself different from everyone around him, so his/her conversations tend to be with the authors he or she reads. It suggests reading as a palliative (though not a curative) for the particular social condition of isolation. Heath also says that these kinds of readers usually grow up to become writers, because this type of communication is so important to them from a young age.

I grew up in a small town where everyone mostly worked with their hands, either as a farmer or a tool maker. There seemed to be no need for reading and writing; I might have just as easily been born with an extra head. I spent most of my time with books, and the connection was emphatic and could not easily be broken. My father used to drive the dirt roads at 50 mph, spewing gravel and dust in his wake, surging down hills and sliding around curves. I would be bouncing in the back seat, oblivious to anything else but the slow progression of hobbits toward Mordor. Neither my father nor my mother was literary-minded. But reading seemed to me as important as eating, and I often combined the two, linking sustenance with sustenance.

You cannot write for anyone but yourself. Once you close the door, it’s just you in there. But sometimes I think I could write for myself at 14, a hapless target walking through the hallways of my school, the streets of my town, the rooms of my home desperate for someone like me. I think I must still exist out there somewhere, maybe in Nebraska or Cleveland, that I’m still frustrated by how hard it is to communicate with the humans around me, but I love to read. The chance to talk to myself at that age, in that dire predicament, is part of why I want to write.

Except what do I say to myself? Many times I greet the blank page with dread. I think that after two decades I don’t have anything he needs to know, or if I do, I won’t be able to say it correctly. But I’m learning to try. I’ve met many writers in the past year, and the thing they seem to have in common is an elementary courage. The courage to face the typewriter or the computer day after day. The courage to make it something that has never been said before but something everyone will recognize. The courage to keep on when nothing seems to be working, the courage to take a stack of manuscript and put it in a mailbox, email it or hand it to someone and say: “Look at this. I made it.” I have borrowed this courage in small bits from these writers and sown it together into a coat that is ill-fitting but serves my need to go into the room and close the door.

Couple the will for a dialogue with your reader (who is really yourself) with the determination that creating and saying out of thin air aren’t going to be easy, and you have Inspiration for your Art. A reason to sit in the chair because you’ve found the way to the rich ore of what William Faulkner called “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.” It won’t be obvious all the time, but at times your vocation will seize you and you will feel a rightness, a neat slotting of yourself into a gap in the world that needs filled. No workshop will give you that. No conference will give you that. It is yours alone. However, they will give you opportunities to meet others like you. Strange isolate beings, half-not-there, some vital part of them always gone fishing in fantasy’s watering hole, but willing perhaps to stay and talk to you about writing. To lecture a bit, commiserate, and buck you up. And then at some point you’ll see a mad light come into their eyes, and you’ll start to really listen up, because you know what you are about to hear is the big secret. They’re going to tell you why they do it.

Why do you do it? Reply to this post or email Aaron at acfalveyatasudotedu.

Ask the Archives: MFA programs

As an undergraduate student of creative writing, I have started a search involving everything about MFA programs, because it seems like the obvious next step. There is a lot to know about what different programs are offering and there is a lot of preparation before anyone can even get into one of the schools. Though many of you have learned the "do's" and "don'ts" of obtaining an MFA degree, I know that many people, like myself, are worried about making avoidable mistakes and maybe even deciding to get a masters without knowing if it's necessary. In fact, despite the ever-present cloud of MFA hovering over English majors like myself, I have absolutely no clue why I should go to school for another few years...just to spend my time workshopping instead of finding a job. And if I did decide to join an MFA program, what are my chances of getting accepted and where do I go?? Have you realized how many programs are offered for the hungry writer, promising chances of sustenance? The web, for once, was not a place of solace for the simple question: what is an MFA program? But through many a day spent trudging through statistics and words of advice and also obtaining a copy of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, I have developed something that is hard to find: a simple fact or fiction about what an MFA program is and what it can do for you. Below this guide are a few commentaries from past interviewees in HFR, to give a little perspective on this issue. Let me take a moment first to thank Tom Kealey for relieving my search by recently publishing his guide to creative writing programs.

FICTION: The MFA is a terminal degree.
FACT: Not anymore! Several schools such as the University of Southern California and the University of Wisconsin offer PHD programs for those who want to distinguish themselves from the all-too-common MFA or MA degree. The work-load is much more strenuous, though of course, but if you love school and can't get enough of dedicating your life to writing, check these schools and others out!

FICTION: Having an MFA will get me published.
FACT: If only it were that easy. :/ Unfortunately, having a Masters does not guarantee anything in the world of money, but by sticking with the program for however many years, you can make alliances with fellow writers and perhaps even some higher-ups who just may possibly love your work. Anything can happen. This is also a great time to talk with other aspiring writers about where to publish and what publishers are looking for.

FICTION: You need to have a degree in order to be a good writer.
FACT: Au contraire, although many people's writings improve significantly with the benefits of a creative writing program, not everyone needs to go. In a MFA program, or any others, you spend a lot of time in workshops and being committed to the atmosphere of writing. So instead of putting that novel off because of work or family, you actually need to write and you are being forced to sit down and just do it. A lot of people find this push critical and therefore appreciate their experience in the MFA program, but not everyone will enjoy this. Since these programs don't guarantee you the sole career of writer, those who don't gain anything from workshops or being immersed with others bursting with ideas, would do better by staying far away from these programs and learning to set a time to write on their own day-to-day basis. It's also thousands of dollars cheaper!

FICTION: So now after going broke attending an undergraduate school, you're going to be owing your soul and body to the MFA programs once your huge bill puts you into debt.
FACT: Yes, it is very, very expensive. But as Kealey says, "about 20 percent of programs fund all or most of their students. Another 40 percent fund some of their students, and the remaining 40 percent fund only a few or none of their students" (12). So even if you don't wish to be in debt by more schooling, but still wish to attend a top school, it's possible. In fact, one school, Cornell University, accepts very few students each year, but their bills are paid by assistantships and internships. Here at ASU, all incoming students are also funded. And FYI, tuition can be anywhere from a couple thousand to thirty thousand depending on the school, so when looking for a school, check out their funding. If top ten schools can pay for you to be there, other schools should give you the same opportunity!

Now, some thoughts from HFR's archives...
Vivian Gornick, 1993: "In the M.F.A. program here, which I'm sure is true for almost every one of them, you have a division, I think it's fair to say, between writers like myself who are old-fashioned readers of literature and speak in the large-what are the issues, who's speaking, why-and pull writing apart from that point of view, always asking these large questions. And then there are people who have developed craft, not theory, which comes very close to being practiced somewhat like theory in that it's a highly reduced and specific skill that's being taught to students. I presume that's what students are here for, but I couldn't ever teach or think that way about literature." and later... "But the M.F.A. programs, like television, don't really develop taste. They give the public what it wants and memoir writing is a piece of understanding in contemporary literature that is growing very, very slowly."

Rick Moody, 1998: "I think that many American graduate writing programs are warehouses really. They don't teach much (because the workshop is a faculty form) and they don't prepare the degree candidates for the life afterwards." and later talking about low-residency M.F.A. programs..."It remains to be seen what the effect of these courses of study will be, but I think they represent, theoretically, an interesting departure from business as usual. I think my low-residency students get a lot more attention from me than I ever got from my workshop instructors when I was in graduate school."

Michael Cunningham, 2003: "I think they succeed, all of them to one extent or another, for the simplest and most basic of reasons: because they are the only places young, unpublished writers are taken seriously in this country. The only places where what you're doing, as an ambitious but unknown writer, is treated as a matter of utmost importance. Everywhere else, you're treated as a hack, poseur, fraud, or slacker."

Still have questions? Check out this blog. It is dedicated to everything MFA and very helpful.

For more information, feel free to send us questions. We are chalk full of resources and answers to help you on understanding the MFA and we are always thrilled to receive opinions from our reader's personal experiences in the program.