imagining what I would say if I didn't get the job I wanted

Well, if there were ever an example of what blogs are made for.... it would be in response to something like this:

I just found out who Mark Slouka was yesterday, when I read a little article of his that tries to open a new asshole on the Columbia University writing MFA program. Talk about biting the hand that fed you.

Now, whatever points he brings up that do have merit are lessened dramatically by the fact that he didn't get appointed for tenure at Columbia.... and then decided to sling this kind shit at them. By publishing in the Columbia campus newspaper, no less? Maybe more reputable and high-profile outlets (Harper's, New Yorker, the Atlantic) rejected his catharsis, or maybe he found just the right niche audience to witness his wrath. Who reads the Columbia Spectator than just Columbia students, anyway? He all but spells out the names of the faculty and administration he targets, and he published his angry diary scribblings in a place that these targets all have easy access to.

I'm not so sure that this was perhaps the most professional way to go about expressing his dislike of not getting the job he wanted. He does pinpoint some issues that I think are worth really taking a look at (in part because it seems that maybe no one is talking about them?), but he immediately paper-shreds his integrity by the fact Columbia didn't give him the job. He goes on then to attack former colleagues he believes are not as well-qualified as he is. Is that such a good idea? He's sitting pretty with a tenure-track position elsewhere now, so the comfort of giving the finger to Columbia doesn't come with potential-job backfire. Or does it? How would his current university-of-hire feel if he turned his vitriol on them? Who's gonna pick up this guy's book and be so happy to read him? Probably nobody who graduates(ed) from Columbia. If situations were reversed and Columbia hadn't have burned him, his article would have had more of a lasting impact and probably wouldn't be dismissed as angry rantings. After all, why apply for tenure at a university MFA program where you feel the quality is so crappy? This lessens that impact all the more.

Rick Moody wrote a similar article in Harper's last summer that momentarily set its crosshairs on Columbia's writing MFA program.... but he was referring to the Columbia of the 1980s. I don't have a good idea on how it has changed for the better or worse, but the fact that he threw a hammer at Columbia doesn't look good for it no matter what decade you're writing about. Ultimately, Rick Moody didn't pick up any screaming fans from Columbia after his article, which in my opinion whined a bit too much about how nobody seemed to like him. Harper's ain't a counselors couch, buddy.

But, maybe Slouka's tirade won't be dismissed so soon? Two nails in Columbia's writing MFA coffin so far, and that can't be ignored. Scary to see what happens next....

A friend of mine told me about an essay/interview of Flannery O'Connor's and her response to the burgeoning popularity of writing MFA programs. When prompted about whether or not MFA programs stifle writers, O'Connor responds that she thinks that they don't stifle writers enough, and that thanks to the MFA there's been a nasty showerdrain-clog of bad writing and bad writers out there. Couldn't Slouka have said something like this instead? Flannery O'Connor wasn't pissed that she didn't get a job, though.