Sorry this isn’t working out the way you intended it to, Sampiro. I think this is excellent proof of the complete irrelevance of these programs - they obviously have a different set of priorities than most of us. It’d be painful to have to re-adjust to fit some less creative worldview. I’ve always been doubtful that these programs are really at all successful in generating successful writers, and have suspected that they’re more geared towards crushing the talent out of aspiring ones.
So don’t let it get you down. I’m a pretty well read person, enjoy sitting back and taking in the classics, both highbrow and low, and I’d rather read your stuff than most anything available. I know I’m not the only one here who feels that way, too.
Not much to contribute that hasn’t already been said, except that before you make any decisions, you should drop whatever you’re doing and read John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (even if you’re not planning on writing novels). Seriously. Get up from the computer and go get it now.
That’s ultimately my thought as well. For FAR less money I could just take an unpaid leave of absence in summer when it’s slow and do nothing but write.
Plus, I’ve borrowed (through Interlibrary Loan) some of the books written by the professors at some of the universities I applied to and— there’s a reason they weren’t bestsellers. They’re mechanically well-written, but just… blah, and that’s not sour grapes. I think in the MFA programs it’s probably more true than in any other that “those who can’t teach”. (Several acting teachers have won Oscars [Lee Strasburg, John Houseman] or had great film careers [Jeff Corey, Howard Gould], but most of the really successful writers who’ve been teachers [King, Vonnegut, etc.] did so after they were successful writers- no idea why as I’d think their writing would pay a helluva lot more- maybe the health insurance.)
Here’s a really long story about why I really turned had major second thoughts about the decision (even before being rejected several places, so it really turned out rather well ). I promise I will show relevance.
I recently wrote the first draft of a story entitled And That’s Why I Flunked Freshmen Economics. It’s an autobiographical story that involves 100% true elements that I would never have written about while my mother was alive. One scene, which I-swear-to-Gawd-happened, involves my mother, ca. 1985, broke and knowing her house was in danger of foreclosure and depressed for many reasons [not least of which was a major bipolar disorder], walking through a grocery store looking at pesticides and poisons trying to decide which one that’s under $4 (the amount of money she can spend) would be most fatal. The poisons not for her, though, it’s for a 70 year old woman, and she casually asks me (like Magda Goebbels at a Spring '45 Garden Party) “You think it’d be better if I gave it to her in a milkshake or if I just told her to drink it straight and what it was for?” It was an act of, if not love, then at least extreme (and perhaps fucked up) compassion.
My 70 year old great-aunt, Lucy, was committed to a snakepit of a mental hospital when she was in her late 20s. Nobody is quite sure why, but the papers were signed by the town doctor, who was also her father, and who was by all accounts a total bastard. I know from her own sparse comments and official records that while there she was lobotomized, she was punished by being locked in a room with a retarded hermaphrodite, she endured shock treatment, she was bathed by being stripped naked and washed with a firehose along with all of the other women in her ward, and there was one psychiatrist to service more than 5,000 patients. God alone knows what else she’s endured: it’s a matter of documented fact that some female patients were repeatedly raped, physical abuse was commonplace, sterilization was sometimes practiced (this was a decade after Carrie Buck in a family where severe mental illness can be documented well before the Civil War).
She was released around 1972 during a cleanup begun by Governor Lurleen Wallace a few years before. By the time I knew her she was extremely quiet and, regardless of what she was like in the 1930s when she was taken there, quite deranged. She was, like my grandmother, who she lived with,absolutely filthy, she was prone to exhibitionism (had NO modesty- I used to earn money from my father by “Lucy Wrangling”, which meant going to get her out of the road when she was walking around naked or exposed and making sure she was “put up” when he was planning to bring colleagues home), and she could be an ordeal and embarassment. She was also one of the gentlest souls on Earth= seeing her with her kittens would break your heart- and she loved to giggle. I used to love making her laugh or when I could get her to dance with me.
Lucy was not afraid of my grandmother (no mean feat- the woman was evil and horrifying), snakes, death, or anything else except for one thing: going back to Bryce Hospital. My grandmother would use it to control her: “You do what I tell you or you’ll be back in the wards tonight!” (the only time I heard my father use misogynist expletives directly aimed at his mother were when she said something like that in his presence- one of his few soft spots was for Lucy, largely because when he was a boy he’d accompanied her to Bryce). She was mortally horrified, she would cry loudly at the mere thought of having to go back.
In 1985 my Grandmother had a stroke and had to be sent to a nursing home. My mother and I brought Lucy her meals (she could not cook) and saw to her needs, etc., and then a completely slanderous anonymous complaint by a busybody neighbor (who claimed “Lucy’s walking from house to house begging for food”- the only occupied house in walking distance to her was ours) caused Human Resources to become involved. Caring for her was a burden, but the reason we did it was because we knew that Lucy was not likely to be sent to a nursing home if we asked for help; she would be sent back to Bryce. Sure enough, that was the recommendation of the first social worker. Lucy went into hysterics, pitiful wailing, and my mother told her “I swear to you- on my life- you will never go back to Bryce Hospital.” (My mother was no relation to Lucy save by marriage, and her husband being dead even that was gone.)
Okay, back to the grocery store. My mother just casually asked about the milkshake. She settles on a rat poison that has the strongest warning, then sends me to get chocolate syrup, milk, and ice cream. I’m horrified but… frankly I’d rather see Lucy die than returned to Bryce myself. We’re almost broke, I repeat, so I by habit pick up the $.50 box of ice milk, and my mother sends me back: “This is Lucy’s last milkshake. Get real ice cream. Not the store brand either, the best they have.”
On the way home my mother, who is bothered by what she’s planning “but I have never broken a solemn promise”, paraphrases (knowingly) Scarlett O’Hara: “Well, I guess I’ve done murder now… I’ll think about that tomorrow.” A little later: “I’ll make some extra milkshake we can all have some. I’m craving something sweet.” When I express horror she says “Oh baby… ours will be just milkshake of course!” then later “Unless you want to make a suicide pact with me, which might not be a terrible idea. We’ll ask the Ouija board later.”
Okay, you get the idea. I’ll go ahead and tell you now Lucy didn’t have to be poisoned and didn’t go back to Bryce (thanks to a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL WONDERFUL woman named Ruth Speaks who I will name by name because she’s dead now and did such a favor by bending rules that… but anyway- the milkshake was never made, but I did flunk my Economics test because of this.
So, there’s a lot of VERY VERY VERY DARK and surreal humor in this one, because there was in the situation. Even my mother and I laughed about it in later years (not uncomfortable laughter I might add, but laughed our asses off a couple of times). There are even some flat out belly laughs in it if I say so myself- Lucy’s reaction to being “beautified” with lipstick and powder for a court appearance, me and my mother “keeping her sane” during said court appearance, my motehr singing a lullaby to my grandmother [who my mother hated with a passion and with reason] at the beginning of the story and forgetting the words, and the whole lackadaisical “You think she’d like a strawberry shake better?” attitude about the special milkshake. It’s a long story with a lot of humor.
So, the reason I mention this:
I sent excerpts of the first draft fo this story to a friend of mine who’s a professor of creative writing at a school I didn’t apply to (MFA) and offered to “critique it as a professor” while I was applying for the programs. Since she decided she cannot critique my work objectively, she gave it to a friend who works at another school where I did apply- I won’t identify the school other than to say it’s a writer’s workshop in a University in Iowa City. Here’s what the friend, an actual MFA professor, wrote back:
This blew me away. There are a thousand criticisms I’d take with my style, my way too verbose nature, structure, etc., but HUMOR? You want me to take out humor? Rest assured- I lived through this- it WAS horror- but it was also funny as hell, even at the time it was morbidly funny and I remember wishing I had somebody to share it with.
Now, this is one professor, but since then I’ve talked to others and they say that other than those who specialize in humor, most don’t respect it being used more than moderately. It’s not “literary” as a rule, and the folks seem believe that
1- a book or story with “funny parts” is, by definition, light
2- a book or story that’s morbidly serious is, by definition, deep
Remember that one person’s opinion is just that. You write very well, and I enjoyed your milkshake story. It was both humorous and sad, heartwarming and heartbreaking.
By the way, I saw someone mention your name once (in a positive light) in a comment on Miss Snark’s blog.
The same professor also referred to the work (which perhaps she didn’t realize was autobiographical, or perhaps she did, who knows) as “obsessed with the grotesque” and to my mother as “a cheerful murderer”.
Okay, I can definitely see Lucy as a grotesque, bless her heart. My mother as cheerful murderer- that pissed me off a bit. I don’t canonize the dead- my mother was capable and culpable of really bad things; this just wasn’t one of them. There was nothing even slightly comic about her decision to poison my aunt, she wasn’t remotely cheerful- she may even be said to be deranged, though it seemed a good idea at the time- and I wasn’t sure if I was going to allow it or not at the time, I honestly couldn’t decide. But while technically it would have been murder (“unlawful and intentional killing of another”) it was- crazy as it sounds- for the most charitable of motives. It would have been a mercy killing- Lucy would rather have died than go back to Bryce, no question about it, and my mother, like me, could not bear the impotence of not being able to help a woman neither of us could truly say we loved but whom both of us cared about, pitied, who had never done any living person harm (save for embarassment and that not maliciously), and the thoughts of being in our own (foreclosed on) home thinking of what hell Lucy was going through as she went through those antebellum gates of the state hospital again (sanitized from when she was there before but still the equivalent still of returning to Auschwitz to a concentration camp survivor) were psychological torture. There was nothing funny about that particular situation.
But Lucy singing in French a song she learned 60 years before as a social worker bathed her and interrupting it long enough to say “Was my left tit now”, or my mom telling a high school graduate probate judge who ran on an anti-evolution platform (for a job that has nothing whatever to do with evolution or science education) and believed that mental illness was caused by demonic possession, that “I can put my hand on a Bible and tell you in good conscience that woman’s mind is as good as yours” all as Lucy is downstairs saying, very loudly, “I gotta piss… I gotta piss… I gotta piss… I gotta piss… take me to where I might piss… take me to where I might piss… take me to where I might piss…take me to where I might piss…” (she always repeated herself in 4’s when nervous) just downstairs and audible from his waiting room (where I could hear both the judge but he couldn’t hear Lucy)- all this was funny as hell even at the time, in a sick sort of way, and while it could be very easily made uniformly horrifying, I think the humor makes it better and a lot more palatable. Depressing people is easy, making them laugh is a lot harder- that’s why Charlie Chaplin’s considered a god while Camille is largely forgotten.
Now, the fact that the excerpts of the story ran 25 pages, THAT I could take criticism over.
So the point is, always brush your teeth as often as you can and floss them once in a while, preferably while wearing your seatbelt and a condom. That’s what makes you a good American. And I’m not getting a M.F.A…
The most horrifying and grotesque thing I’ve read in any of your posts is the quote from that professor.
Your humor is your style. You deal with tragedy through humor. If Professor Schmuck has no sense of humor, he’s the last person you should be learning from. Good move, Sampiro.
You need to write a book about your stories. Your humour is what makes it. That was one person’s opinion, certainly not of anyone’s on the Dope who has read your stories, I’m sure.
Comments like the one you quoted from the Lit Prof are exactly why you should keep your mfa out of an MFA program. You already know how to write, what you need is an agent. And perhaps an editor. Definitely an agent. I love the free samples, but now that you’ve got me hooked on your writing it’s time to make me pay.
In the news today was a mention or two of the passing of a writer of some minor renown you might have heard of, one Kurt Vonnegut. He made his grotesque experiences in WWII accessible by telling them humorously. Tonight on no less a forum than PBS’ NewsHour, he was compared to Twain (repeatedly), and also to Swift. “Can’t take it seriously because it’s funny”?! Academic hell is too good for the LitJerk.
Oh, and your story about the milkshake would never work told seriously. Never. I think you know this. I wonder if LitJerk has ever read anything before. :rolleyes:
). I promise I will show relevance.