Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies

by Anis Shivani, Jay Parini (Introduction)

Against the Workshop is the first sustained critique of twenty-first century literary production in America under the MFA/creative writing program infrastructure. Since earlier critics like John Aldridge wrote on the subject, the creative writing regime has become vastly more institutionalized. Publishing has changed, but what does it mean for the quality of fiction and poetry? This book brings the subject completely up-to-date, by focusing on fiction and poetry generated during the last decade. The book contrasts the vast amount of sludge with the rare gems, to argue that the creative writing product is a debased one that will not stand the test of time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Criticism

300 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Anis Shivani is a fiction writer, poet, and critic in Houston, Texas.

His debut novel, Karachi Raj, will be published in 2013. His other books are My Tranquil War and Other Poems (NYQ Books, 2012), The Fifth Lash and Other Stories (C&R Press, Nov. 2012), Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies (2011), and Anatolia and Other Stories (2009), longlisted for the Frank O'Connor award.

He is currently at work on a new book of criticism, and a new novel called Abruzzi, 1936.

Anis is the winner of a 2012 Pushcart Prize, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, with reviews appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Boston Globe, Kansas City Star, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, San Antonio Express-News, Charlotte Observer, St. Petersburg Times, Texas Observer, Brooklyn Rail, and others.

His fiction, poetry, and criticism appear regularly in leading literary journals such as the Boston Review, Georgia Review, Southwest Review, Harvard Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Agni, Epoch, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Subtropics, Threepenny Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, Boulevard, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Denver Quarterly, Verse, Poetry Northwest, Washington Square, London Magazine, Stand, Times Literary Supplement, Meanjin, Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review, Cambridge Quarterly, Contemporary Review (Oxford), and many others...

Reviews

[Taka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acerbic and refreshing--

I was a bit disappointed to find that this book isn't entirely dedicated to systematic polemics against MFA programs, but consists of a mishmash of essays published in literary magazines over a decade, giving it a diverse but disorganized feel. That said, this veritable curmudgeon of a critic (and writer) does not mince words, and he is hilariously and trenchantly critical and thoughtful about pretty much everything MFA programs hold dear (and in this sense he manages to execute one of its commandments: kill your darlings). And boy how he kills those darlings. As a graduate of an MFA program, I thought his criticism was both apt very much welcome, as he let me see all those blind spots and experiences I had a hard time articulating (such as the puzzling veneration of the masters whom I just could not venerate, such as Dennis Johnson, Jim Shepard, Wells Tower, and most of the uber poets). It also threw light on those hidden assumptions I've internalized without even being aware of it (e.g. that revision is GOOD, prolificacy EVIL). And MFA did skew my perception and ruined my enjoyment of writing and literature a great deal for sure (e.g. I can't stand poorly written works, for example, as my inner critic keeps yammering that every sentence must ring with poeticism or else it's trash and not worth my precious time), and since I realized that shortly after graduating from the program, I've been trying to de-MFA myself, which has been a long and slow process, still ongoing but greatly aided by Shivani's incisive and insightful criticism.

For anyone steeped in (or dreaming of) MFA programs, this is a necessary antidote.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book with an open mind, but I was sure that I would disagree with Shivani on every point. However, Shivani makes a pretty good case for the idea that MFA writing programs have created a conservatism in American fiction. If I had one complaint, it is that the book provides plenty of great arguments with very little evidence. Having widely read many literary journals over the years, I don't need any examples, because I've seen it for myself. If I came to this book cold, however, I might find his arguments less convincing. Still, if you're a writer, and you have some background in literary theory and criticism, I recommend you read this. It's a pretty quick read. The very last essay is the most powerful, in my opinion.

[Felix Da Costa Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the high rating, I actually had quite a few issues with this compilation of essays. I originally saw Shivani’s work referenced in another essay about the Creative Writing workshop, and his dismissal of undergraduate writers that participate in workshop as inexperienced and lacking drew me in. The content of Shivani’s work is mostly a critique on famous works of Fiction in which he is harsh and brutal if he can’t find anything he likes about a specific work. The anthology reads as the thoughts of a critic in which Shivani is unsympathetic towards workshops because they promote an outdated system- yes, true, but Shivani himself looks at modern Literature and constantly complains about it being too dissimilar to the works of classic dead authors.

Let me be very clear: I don’t like him. However, I respect Shivani’s strong opinions and I also see the blatant hypocrisy. A critic who detests the workshop for its inability to change, yet he seems to be stuck in the past grasping onto the coattails of people who have long gone. I can’t deny that his essays, as hurtful as they are, are well written. 4/5 stars

[V · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe in dangerous art. I believe in revolution.

Tropicalia shunned the cultural puritanism of Bossa Nova and became an artistic movement so dangerous it had to be smashed by the Brazilian fascist government. Does that make Bossa Nova music bad? No, but only by rejecting its limitations could the Tropicalistas achieve revolution.

Early punk rockers’ disdain for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd is somewhat ironic in a day where the Clash and the Sex Pistols regularly appear alongside their enemies on Rolling Stone’s “Best _____ of All Time” lists, but their war against a perceived deadening of rock music is what makes their music so much more listenable than the thousands of imitators who have appeared since.

Dangerous writing, as all dangerous art, must be preceded by killing one’s idols. I’m sure that Jhumpa Lahiri has a diligent work ethic and devotes herself to her writing. I’m equally sure that so does Stephanie Meyer. Why, in the writing world, is one fair game for criticism and not the other?

In the eyes of a typical member of the literati, critics of literary fiction are either self-satisfied writers frustrated by not getting published, or old men nostalgic for the days of the classical canon. They are unable to conceive of a third option--the option of revolution, of trying to find meaning beyond what our elder statesmen tell us is meaningful. (Experimental literature, which still rehashes techniques the Surrealist invented 100 years ago, doesn’t cut it.)

It really is as Shivani reports: young writers are not interested in changing the game. They are intent on playing it and playing it well. The MFA system turns writers into marketing machines, neither offending nor inspiring anyone.

As a collection of essays, “Against the Workshop” is uneven. Since these were previously published in various journals, newspapers and websites, he often reiterates the same ideas in multiple essays. I should also point out that this book is not intended for laymen. Its target audience is those who are already intimately familiar with the nepotism and inbreeding of literary journals, fellowships and MFA programs. As a fiction writer myself, I found some of his essays on American poetry hard to access.

At its best moments, Shivani’s criticism challenges my assumptions about my own writing. His essays offered me fresh insight into my deep conceptual errors. I now recognize the specific ways I often fell into the paralyzing, grief-drenched landscape of MFA melodrama--the reliance on child-narrators shocked by the world’s cruelty, the focus on inaction over action, the segregation of people’s lives from the political situations that affect them.

Academic workshops assume that any story the writer wants to tell is a good one, therefore the only source of criticism is the “craft” and language of the piece. Workshops cannot encourage writers to think more deeply about the ideology of their writing. Writers write the same story of shame and inertia as a response to an unchangeable world over and over because they don’t even realize they are writing it. The underlying meaning of their own work is a mystery to them.

Workshop mastery results in what Shivani calls “competence without genius,” “stories that meet every last requirement of a well-made story, but there is no soul, no emotion worth speaking of.” Our young American writers create beautiful prose about small personal tragedies, but as they are personally ignorant of history, philosophy and economic systems, they are incapable of telling a story that shakes the reader, that reveals new insight on our daunting socio-political crises, that inspires political or personal action.

A number of these essays, including “Why is American Fiction in its Current Dismal State?”, “Decadence, American-Style: Whatever Happened to the American Short Story?” and “The MFA/Creative Writing System is a Close, Undeomcratic Medieval Guild System that Represses Good Writing”, should be read by anyone who cares about American fiction. (Two of these three are also available online if you are so inclined.) But this book is more than just a tirade against contemporary literary fiction. In his reviews of Judy Grahn, Eric Mile Williamson and Teddy Wayne, among others, he gives hope for what American literature could be if us writers get our head out of our asses and do our best to make sense of our deeply troubling world.

[Dustin Pickering · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shivani's training as a economist has perhaps taught him discipline and resolve in the world of reading. I have no other explanation for the depth of his reading, the insights he shares, and the way he ties all of his insights into socio-economic forces of production. This collection is part Nietzsche, part Guy Debord, with a splattering of Marx. I enjoyed his critique of the "plastic realism" and the forces of the literary world, but what I find the most salutary from the book is he is not simply attacking. He lists a set of principles by which he covers the vast field of literary production. His opinions are controversial and his name is everywhere. This book will be Emerson to your Thoreau impulses-- you will seek your own in the woods to prove his theory.

[John F · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mostly a diatribe with no facts whatsoever to back up the writer's viewpoints. Very weak writing. The basic activity is a continuous venting off. Shivani is angry about something. The reading gets tiring very quickly.

[Carol Roh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yikes. Just...yikes. (for now)