The Problem with America: A Conversation with Seth Abramson

Note: Before starting this blog, mostly to create a space where I could call out Seth Abramson, I left a comment about his MFA rankings on his blog, using my real name. Several days later, after the blog was underway, he tracked me down on facebook, where we had the following correspondence.


Seth Abramson: Dear [MFAwesome], I just discovered that we're Facebook friends. I don't know how that happened, but I suppose it gives me an opportunity to ask you what your problem is? Your comment on my blog was nasty and unfair for too many reasons to count. Any particular reason for you asking to be my Facebook friend and then acting like a douchebag on my blog? I don't think I'm being off the wall here -- what you wrote made you look like a douchebag.

P.S. In case you forgot (or were drunk or high at the time or whatever), here's what you wrote: "Hi there! I think it's great that you're compiling these rankings. When I was applying to schools there really weren't any to be found. However, I think they are complete garbage. I don't accept your bullshit numbers or your bullshit 'methodology'. I don't accept that you attend UW Madison and you rank it at #2. I don't accept your 'objectivity'. Please cease and desist." I don't know, maybe I'm like hyper-sensitive, but that reads douchebag to me.

MFAwesome: Haha. Sorry about that, my friend. Yes, drunk, high douchebaggery. And you're right to call out douchebaggery when you see it. Apologies.

That said, I pretty much stand by what I wrote. I understand there's a tonal problem there, but I didn't feel like taking the time or energy to craft a lucid argument, and I still don't, though I’m sure such an argument could very, very easily be crafted. Buck up, fella. You had to know you were doing potentially controversial work. Bound to piss someone off sometime.

Seth Abramson: Fair enough -- you don't have to craft an argument, and I won't bore you with one either. I'll just say this: It's fine if someone disapproves of the methodology (though I don't have difficulty defending it), but it's a different thing altogether when someone calls me a liar. Your comment about UW-Madison (whose MFA I _don't_ attend, by the way) is what really angered me. All of the data for the rankings is public data which doesn't come in any way from my own opinions. My personal opinions form absolutely zero part of the rankings.

UW-Madison is currently #3, but it wouldn't be quite that high in my own personal rankings -- it's applicants who put it there, not me. So whether I'm "objective" or not, my personal opinions just have no opportunity, whatsoever, under the methodology, to intrude on the data. Hate the rankings, hate the methodology, but don't tell me I'm committing a fraud on the applicants of America unless you have proof.

MFAwesome: Drunk and high or not, I didn't say you attended UW Madison's MFA program. I know you're in the PhD program. Which means, presumably, that you take writing workshops, teach courses, and draw a paycheck from the University. Apples to oranges, don't you think? And still a conflict of interest. I'm not calling you a liar or accusing you of fraud, just saying that the conflict of interest should disqualify you from the role of "ranker."

Here's the thing. When a thing claims to be one thing and is obviously something else, I call that thing bullshit. I wouldn't have a problem with your "rankings" if you called them instead "survey of MFA applicants", but that loses a little punch, doesn't it?

Ranking programs this way is like polling job applicants and then publishing a list "The Best Companies in America". Might be an interesting list, but it would be essentially meaningless.

I'm sure you've heard this all before, but to make an accurate list, at a bare minimum you'd need to rank faculty, poll faculty, poll current students, poll former students, rank post-graduation job placement, and rank post-graduation publication records. But I can see why you don't do that, since it would be a lot of work.

So there you go, recuse yourself until you're no longer affiliated with a program that you're ranking, and I won't call you a fraud. Change the name of your "rankings" to better reflect what they actually are, and I won't call them bullshit. Or change the "methodology" and actually do the hard work required. Otherwise, you'll have to live with me calling it how I see it.

Seth Abramson: [MFAwesome], no one who lives and works outside the CW field would give enough of a damn about MFA programs to rank them or even (frankly) to gather together information about them, so any database or ranking or whatever about MFA programs is going to be run by someone affiliated with an institution -- period. AWP does annual surveys of MFA programs, publishes a database of information, &c, and it's housed at an MFA program -- George Mason. The Board of AWP is comprised of faculty at MFA programs. The most that can be done -- that any reasonable person could ask of a ranking system in this field -- is this: (1) All of the data is publicly available and therefore publicly verifiable, making the claim of "bias" just a feeble excuse for not accepting publicly available and publicly verifiable data which anyone could confirm if they wanted to get off their butt and do that; (2) All of the data, once collected, goes through an editorial process which involves independent persons not affiliated with any ranked institution. P&W is an independent non-profit with a huge editorial staff that reviews everything I do; moreover, I work under a contract which prohibits me from having direct contact with programs. And once again, I am not "affiliated with a program that I'm ranking" (as you yet again claim), I'm in a doctoral program at a university which also hosts one of 207 ranked MFA programs -- though again, what the hell does that matter when all the research I do is independently verifiable (and verified) anyway. In five years of doing this work -- and where do you get off urging me to "do the hard work required"? I work hundreds of hours a year on this, what the hell do _you_ do for anyone but act the troll on people's blogs? -- programs have asked for my data to be corrected fewer than eight times, and in only three of those instances did the data changes result in any sort of substantial ranking alteration. That's a record for accuracy I'd put up against anyone's -- especially yours, as my three major errors in five years is two less than the five major errors you just made in just your last Facebook note to me. In any case, as an attorney I have a sneaking suspicion I know exponentially more than you do about what constitutes "a conflict of interest" and what doesn't.

You want to know what a conflict of interest would be, [MFAwesome]? THE METHODOLOGY YOU ARE SUGGESTING WE USE. What kind of moron thinks that surveying "current students" is not a conflict of interest? In that case, the actual data for the rankings would be _created_ by people with an institutional affiliation and every reason to be self-interested; unlike here, where there's only an institutional affiliation as to a single researcher who a) doesn't create the data, b) doesn't presently attend any of the ranked programs, and c) can be independently verified as to everything he does. Likewise, how in the world can you claim to even have an inkling of what the term "conflict of interest" means when you want to "poll faculty" regarding the quality of... OOPS! their employers. That's as asinine as polling current students regarding the quality of... OOPS! their own academic credentials. Or as asinine as asking "former students" to rate the quality of... OOPS! their own CVs.

Maybe this is why no credible ranking methodology _in the world_ asks current students or faculty to self-report on their own alma maters or employers? Here's the thing, [MFAwesome]: years have been spent honing this methodology, and I resent the sort of brazen jackassery that makes you think you can lecture me about how ranking methodologies are devised. You're ignorant on this topic -- totally so -- and that makes you arrogance all the more risible.

As I'm sure you know (being clearly so well-researched on this topic), the P&W rankings are not one ranking but nine rankings -- and the majority of those are hard-data rankings whose methodology is beyond dispute: selectivity rankings, funding rankings, student-to-faculty ratio rankings, fellowship-placement rankings, and job-placement rankings (do you seriously know so little about what you're popping off about that you just advised me to do "post-graduation job placement" rankings, when exactly that type of ranking is _in the current issue of the magazine_?).

What you're complaining about here is a single part of the rankings, a survey of individuals in the field of creative writing with some basis of knowledge (and a strong innate motive to be knowledgeable) about a wide range of programs -- exactly the sort of surveys U.S. News does for well over two-thirds of the degree types they rank. The difference? USNWR stops there -- they do _only_ those surveys. P&W augments its surveys with five hard-data rankings and nine other categories of data, the better to bolster the validity of the surveys. So unless you've been on the USNWR website recently popping off about how they're all frauds and they don't know anything about statistics or methodology, you've no grounds to be so recalcitrant here.

You can "call it how you see it," [MFAwesome], and that's exactly the problem with America -- ignorant, stupid people "calling it how they see it" when they don't know what the hell they're talking about. So here's me "calling it how I see it" on a subject I now have more than enough to make a call on: You're a douchebag. In the future, don't request to be Facebook friends with anyone you plan on being a towering asshole to.

S.

Note: S. 'unfriended' after sending this message, but before I had the chance to read it, so I wasn't able to respond. I don't think responding would be that hard. Apparently though, S. hadn't taken the tongue lashing to a level that was satisfactory to him, and he called me on the phone later that night (my phone # was listed on facebook). If you want to discuss his "rankings" with him, his phone number is 515-421-3101.

A Catch-all Rationale for Writerly Bitching

Dudes, dude #1 here. On a recent afternoon, I happened upon a blog post that I wanted to respond to.  

I have been in a dark place, dudes (this isn't the blog post--I'll get to that in a minute). That dark place, for me, has included visiting writing forums and writer’s and agent’s blogs. Which doesn't sound as bad as it is. But there's not a lot of honest talk about writing on the internet. Just a bland ocean of back-patting, virtual hugs, self-congratulation, and self congratulation disguised as self-flagellation.  

I think you'll better understand my relationship to the bland ocean if I relay the process that led me to the blog post in question. Be warned dudes, it gets ugly:

1)      I email revisions to my agent. These are revisions to a book that has been read and edited by two readers at the agency, line-edited by the agent herself, and edited by me personally a couple of times, probably already the cleanest piece of writing I've ever done. But in this case I am editing based on “feedback” (read: rejection) from all over the big six--editors who, to someone like me, are basically celebrities. So the revision process is brutal. I condense chapters, add short scenes, amplify theme, and find places to insert more character development. By the time I’m done, the book is 6,000 words shorter, maybe a little better, and viewing it in track changes makes it look typed in red. It takes probably the most hellish six weeks of my life to accomplish this.

2)      My email is immediately bounced back with a message explaining that my agent is travelling out of the country until after Labor Day with limited access to email. It's a cold, cold world, dudes.

3)       So, as has become my habit, I settle in for a nice long wait.

4)      And, as has become my habit while waiting, rather than do something productive, I check out a few writing blogs and forums. I go to one forum in particular, or a particular thread in a particular forum pretty often, and that is what I do on this particular day.  This thread can be pretty depressing stuff, because it’s full of writers who have agents and are out on submission to editors. There is almost never news of a sale.  Misery loves company.

5)      While reading this thread, as has become my habit, I also start drinking rather heavily.

6)      But, lo and behold, today someone has announced a sale.  I look at the PM announcement, and see that the sale (a “significant deal” nonetheless) was made by someone at the same agency I’m with.

7)      Down the internet wormhole we go. I find out the writer that made the sale is not repped by the agent who sold the book. I look up the writer’s “real” agent. I read her blog. There is a blog post about the sale. The book was a write-for-hire for a book development company, and the book development company, not the writer, is who I share representation with. All fine and good. Writers gotta eat, same as everyone else. I don’t blame the writer for taking the work, and I don’t blame agent for steering the writer in that direction (well maybe a little, but hindsight is 20-20). Still, it’s gotta sting for the writer, who probably got 10-15K out of the deal, when the book goes on to sell in the 250-500K range. It stings for me, too, since the news of the sale gave me a little hope because I thought the writer and I were in the same boat.

8)      A little further down the wormhole. At the bottom of the “real” agent’s blog post about the big sale, there are several comments. As is my habit, I crack open another brew and quickly read the comments. I recognize one of the commenter’s names. Which leads me to the commenter’s website. Where I find out that the commenter is another of my agent’s clients. On her website, I find the announcement that the commenter’s book has sold “in a major deal” earlier in the summer. Hence the agent’s long vacation. Now I am really stinging. Someone else, again, is a millionaire.

9)      I head out to dinner with the wife. I eat cerviche for the first time. It is amazing. I consume a few more beers. The wife gets sick of my bitching.  

10)   Upon returning home, I reenter the wormhole, which takes me back to the "real" agent’s blog, where I find the following post (I am paraphrasing):

“Be careful about writerly internet bitching, because we’ll find you out. Agents and editors are constantly trolling the web looking for reasons to put writers on their naughty lists. Even if you’re disguising yourself in some way, you’re not being as sneaky as you think.”

Oh really? 

If I may, a tiny little story. When we were in grad school at Montana, Dude #2 and I were at book release party. The book release party was thrown by a famous author, celebrating the release of another author’s debut novel, which had sold for an obscene amount of money. Dude #2 and I were out on the porch bitching about the darkness and general unfairness of the universe. Another student who was always stirring shit up came out onto the porch. The other student asked me, in so many words, if I hated the author who was being celebrated. I said, yeah. She said, Really?, no doubt hoping that I would slip into one of the inelegant rants I had become known for. What I said, in so many words, is that I hated that the author had what I wanted.

It turned out that the author who was being celebrated, who we were discussing, had followed us out onto the porch and overheard the whole conversation. You know what happened next? If you guessed that I got thrown out on my ass, never spoke to the famous author again, got kicked out of school, hung my head in disgrace and faded into oblivion, you were right. Just kidding. We smoked a bunch of pot, talked awhile, buried the hatchet, and became friends. I think the writer had heard one too many false congratulations and found the honesty heartening.

The moral of the story? Jealousy is natural. Honesty is refreshing. And no one should begrudge you a little honest bitching. When I say, “writer ‘X’ had this or that happen for them, and it pisses me off,” it doesn’t mean that I don’t think the writer is talented, or that I hate them, or hate their book, or harbor any ill will toward them at all. 

For the record, both of the projects I mentioned above have undeniable positive qualities in terms of concept and target audience, and I’m sure the writing and storytelling in both is very strong. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m jealous. And I understand that my agent is busy, that I'm low on the totem pole, that I should be happy editors are taking the time to read my book at all. I understand that the process is what it is, and I understand my place in it. I don't harbor ill will toward anyone. But that doesn't mean I'm going to wake up tomorrow and love waiting. 

And as for shit-talking in the “Seth Abramson is bullshit” vein, well, dudes, we are artists. And what that means is that we have spent a good part of our lives cultivating our artistic sensibilities. Taste, dudes, aesthetics. And more than that, we’re writers. We pay attention to how people talk, act and think. When I call Seth Abramson bullshit, I’m trusting all that. I’m trusting my own taste and judgment that he’s actually bullshit, but I’m also trusting that I’m not the only one who thinks so. At some point, dudes, you've got to call them how you see them and let the chips fall where they may. 

Man Fiction Weekly

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock.

Dude number 2 here.  This isn’t a review because I haven’t finished the book yet, but I wanted to talk about Donald Ray and how his fiction should strike fear in the heart of the “Quirky.”  I was talking to Dude #1 recently, mostly about how Man Fiction might be on an uptick, when I looked down to an area of carpet around my side of the bed that was covered in books I bought from the Borders good-bye and good-luck sale.  There were a couple classics that I haven’t got around to reading like Confederacy of Dunces and White Noise, but the large majority of the stack of books included newer hardcovers that I’d heard about one way or another.  I’m not ashamed to say I bought two old McSweeney’s quarterlies, the newspaper one, and the Caren Beilin one.  Then there was The Devil All the Time sitting there looking at me so mean and intense.  Its cover has an orange bloodstain dripping off a golden retriever sitting on hanging logs surrounded by crude hovering crosses.  Not that I judge books by their covers, but fuck me this is a beautiful book.  It doesn’t take long to realize that what this book is doing hasn’t been done in an honest way since Flannery O’Connor.  The only difference is that Pollock isn’t attempting some posh new form of Southern Gothic; rather, he is writing about what he knows—the land and people of rural Ohio.  Call it Middle Gothic—he will be the godfather.  He follows Knockemstiff, a collection of stories, with The Devil, this even grittier novel.  I’m halfway through it, and I couldn’t wait to write on it.  Where I grew up in South Georgia, we had Rattlesnake Baptists, Dude #3 can speak to this; however, in Ohio there are spider eating revivalists!  Need I say more?  Drop the shape-shifter chronicles, and pick up something that will put hair on your chest.            

The Kyler

From time to time I will have subs made at this grocery store deli by my house, usually when I’m tired from work or do not feel like rearranging my garage to access my grill.  There’s a mish-mosh of workers that man the deli/meat counter at the grocery store, but every time I go there lately, I only seem to get one guy that waits on me.  His name his Kyle R.  His friends and coworkers lovingly call him Kyler as in “Yo Kyler, makin a sub?” or “Kyler, wazzzup?”  He is taller than me and much younger, high school I think, and he’s working on a nearly complete mustache.  He’s got this cold stare that ruminates from two beady black eyes and skin that’s pale and populated with red and white pimples.  He is fat—not pretty.  From an outside view of Kyler, I like him.  I understand his awkward pain and his subtle rage towards the customer—the whole world even!  At first, the little things he does at the sandwich counter make me laugh.  For instance, he once ran his hands through his floppy hair and without gloves made a Club Sub.  Once, he dropped a whole loaf of bread on the ground and put it back on the cooling rack.  He shot me a smile, like yeah…I do that sometimes.  Things have been falling off lately though.  He’ll cough in his hands and continue crafting sandwiches.  When I asked for banana peppers last week, he looked down at the empty container that was filled with neon green juice, made a stop-gap cup out of his hand, filled his hand with the juice, and then dripped the juice over the top of my sub.  When I said “Really,” he looked at me and shrugged.  Hand to God he shrugged!  Yesterday though, everything changed.  This is what happened:

 I asked for two subs on white bread. “What kind of bread?” he said.  I said "white," again.  “On both?” he asked.  I said yes.  A manager-type lady was filling the chicken salad display to my left.  “What kind of cheese?” he said.  Provolone with extra provolone, I said.  “I have to charge you for the extra cheese,” he said.  The manager-type lady looks up and said “Kyler, we don’t charge for extra cheese here.”  He put the extra cheese on.  He finished my wife’s sub, and handed it to me, pushing it at me and dropping it before I could grab it—it fell into my basket.  When he was working on mine, I noticed the bread had seeds on the outside.  This is when things got dicey.  I asked what kind of bread he was using.  “Wheat,” he said.  I asked what kind of bread he used for the other sub.  “Wheat,” he said again.  “I ordered the subs on white bread,” I said.  It didn’t compute for Kyler.  “Did you hear me?” I asked.  “You said wheat,” he said.  I was horrified, but not totally surprised.  “I said white bread,” I repeated.  Now there was a short line forming behind me.  People were watching, I felt them.  Kyler rolled the sub up in the brown wax paper, not in the fresh sandwich wrapping paper, and he hands it to me nicely.  “You said wheat,” he said finally and moved to the next customer.  What happened next goes against everything I stand for, and I am not proud of my actions.  I walked up to customer service and I had a sit-down with the store manager.  I thought she would say, “oh, he’s on the school/work program” or “Kyler’s slow,” but the lady looked into my eyes and said horribly, “I’ll take care of it.”  As I was walking out with my groceries, I looked over and Kyler was laughing, he looked so happy.

Other things that are not Awesome

"Being a writer", for the past year or so, has not been awesome. "Being a writer," has involved a lot of waiting. "Being a writer," has involved holding down a lot of menial, slightly embarrassing jobs, in order to earn a very meager living (walking other people's dogs, selling beer at football games, sorting through emails, attending construction prebids at Red Lobsters and Wendy's). "Being a writer"might as well be called "being a slightly incompetent and very slow editor of one's own work."

This is a word map of my past year: Finish book, query, query, walk dogs, query, walk dogs, sell beer, walk dogs, query, wait, wait wait, send sample pages, wait, send full MS, wait, walk dogs, walk dogs, do more embarrassing shit for money, wait, wait, wait, sink into a depression you don't know if you'll ever come out of, important phone conversation, revise, revise, walk dogs, walk dogs, revise, wait, wait, wait, get married, wait, more queries, walk dogs, more full requests, offers of representation, walk dogs, sign contract with agent, revise, revise, wait, walk dogs, wait, sink further into a depression that you thought couldn't get deeper, wait, revise, revise, walk dogs, revise, wait, wait, walk dogs, wait, out on submission, walk dogs, wait, buy house, wait, hear about book going on second reads, wait, wait, walk dogs, do other embarrassing shit for money, walk dogs, wait, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, revise, walk dogs, walk dogs, revise, the pit of depression is apparently bottomless, revise, revise, wait, walk dogs, walk dogs, wait, wait, wait, sign contract for new play commission, wait, wait, walk dogs, wait, wait wait.

Fine, one actual substantive reason that Seth Abramson is bullshit is that he ranked the Wisconsin MFA program, at which he is a student, second in the country. That, my dudes, is not objectivity. That is bullshit.

Montana is Awesome, Seth Abramson is not

I created this blog because I lacked an appropriate venue to tell world that this guy is a little bitch. We will see what it grows into from there.

Why is he a bitch? Let me count the ways. Only a little bitch would have a picture of Keanu Reeves on his blog instead of himself. Only a little bitch would wear this scarf.

But this guy, more specifically, is a bitch because of this, in which Montana, the best MFA program in the country, is ranked 21.

I could now go on and on with "data" and "methodology", but that would make me a bit of a bitch, which I am not.

So there you go. Post number one.

There are three of us (although only two of us are actually officially existing here at this point). We are buds. No bitches here.  That's enough info for the time being because I (dude #1) have some serious shit to talk about a wide range of topics, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Except for Seth Abramson. Who is a bitch.