“I started this like 3 years ago and never reviewed it!
The first 2/3 was pretty solid, but then the book kinda takes a shit.
There are two essays in particular where things slow WAY down, critiques of The Program Era by Mark McGurl, which is a 9 years old, 480-page dense-as-fuck book about post-war fiction writing that I couldn’t see anyone outside of this insular academic world reading (btw, if you haven’t read The Program Era, skip these essays. They’re pretty high-falootin’ and impenetrable to start with, and you’ll be completely lost up shit creek. You’ll have a paddle, but that paddle is made of a very absorbent wood, and the shit of shit creek leeches its way up the handle pretty quick). These essays make some good points, but holy shit do they make you work for it, and it’s just sort fo weird to read two essays about a long-ass book with no real preface or anything. Plus, I discovered one of these two was written as a book review in 2009 rather than originating as something for this collection in 2014. It was sort of too bad because it was one of the few things that addressed student and text diversity. But hey, for my money, go read the thing Junot Diaz wrote about his MFA time. Solid shit. “