quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

xp Que: almost everyone I know who has gotten an MFA (in creative writing, visual art, etc.) or a Master's in Music in the past 5-10 years took out huge loans. Partially because the most prominent schools around here are all private and tuition is something like $30k/year.

that is total insanity

yeah, Que, I gotta admit, I wouldn't have done that and marveled a bit at those who did. just to be clear, though, the people borrowing like $70k were usually putting about half of that just toward living in Manhattan without jobs.

xpost - keeping in the mind the caveat about loans for living (cause a $10k stipend or whatever sounds great but isn't exactly a year's cost-of-living), you can very much get an MFA in a lot of places without having to take out ridiculous loans

nabisco did you have a job while you were in the mfa program?

cause a $10k stipend or whatever sounds great but isn't exactly a year's cost-of-living)

it's pretty okay if your tuition is waved and you're not living in a big city

not asking for financial reasons, just wondering if its possible to both work a (part-time, i assume) job and get the work done for a program like that

but yeah nabisco, i always wondered if you took out loans because i know Columbia doesn't fund as much as other places do, but it seemed impolite to ask. sounds like you didn't have to take out an insane amount, which is cool

xp nabisco: I went to State school for my Master's which at the time ran about $1000/semester, and I worked part-time and went to school part-time for most of it. I took out loans the semester I did my final project, after several years of trying to do both final project and working and failing. The amount they gave me for living expenses was pretty generous ... far more than I "made" by working, though I'd guess it would've been "barely enough" for someone paying market rent in San Francisco.

Ahem, yes it is. BUT WRITERS ARE ALL INSANE.

smackdown? Oberlin has:

Dan Chaon:
His first novel was You Remind Me of Me (2004). His short-story collections Fitting Ends (1996) and Among the Missing (2001) were both well-received; the latter was a finalist for a National Book Award[1], and was also named one of the year's ten best books by the American Library Association[2] and as a notable book of the year by The New York Times.[3]. Chaon's short stories have also won the Pushcart Prize[4] and the O. Henry Award,[5] and have been included in the Best American Short Stories of 1996 and 2003.[6] He was awarded the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.[7]

we used to have Martha Collins:
Martha Collins is the author of Blue Front, a book-length poem based on a lynching her father witnessed when he was five years old. Blue Front won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was chosen as one of "25 Books to Remember from 2006" by the New York Public Library.
Collins' chapbook Sheer (Barnwood, 2008) is her most recent publication.
She has also published four collections of poems, two books of co-translations from the Vietnamese, and an earlier chapbook of poems.
Her other awards include fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation, as well as three Pushcart Prizes, the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, and a Lannan residency grant.
(FYI, Collins was the first American caucasian to ever win the Anisfield-Wolf award. past winners? Notable past winners include Zora Neale Hurston (1943), Langston Hughes (1954), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1959), Maxine Hong Kingston (1978), Wole Soyinka (1983), Nadine Gordimer (1988), Toni Morrison (1988), Ralph Ellison (1992), Edward Said (2000), and Derek Walcott (2004).)

Kazim Ali:
Kazim Ali (born 1971)[1] is an American poet, novelist, essayist and professor. His most recent books are The Disapperance of Seth (Etruscan Press, 2009) and Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). His honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. His poetry and essays have been featured in many literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review,[2] Boston Review, Barrow Street, Jubilat, The Iowa Review, and Massachusetts Review, and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2007.
In 2003 he co-founded the independent press Nightboat Books, and served as its publisher from 2004-2007, and currently serves as a founding editor.[3]

and really, that is just the beginning. Ali and Chaon are considered top of their field, and Collins is too, though she no longer teaches.

real, non trolly question here:

do good/great writers make good/great teachers?

Depends on whether they are teaching to make ends meet or teaching because they see the profession as part of what writers do-- nurture other writers.

yale classics is so bad most yalies cant tell the difference between heraclitus and hercules!!

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Monday, July 20, 2009 5:16 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

I can definitely tell you where the clit is!

Not that one has to be within an institutional setting to do so. Many people I know, including one of the best professors I've ever had, have pretty much disavowed the academy at this point in favor of giving lectures and teaching classes outside of such an environment. Some good examples of this phenomenon are found on the west coast, with the Kootenay School of Writing up in Vancouver, BC, and with David Buuck's BARGE group, which does work around the Bay Area relating to environmental aesthetics and writing.

Max, I actually worked full-time one year -- class til noon, work til eight, read/write til two -- and I certainly wasn't the only one; obviously that's not ideal in terms of really concentrating on your work, but yeah, it's absolutely no-question possible to work and still focus. (Possibly even good practice for being able to write when you're done.) Que, I hear Columbia's swung back up with their funding, which is a good thing -- I got funded okay, which I was thankful for, definitely, and took a few federal loans to make up the difference; worked for what passed as rent and what passed for food.

and with David Buuck's BARGE group, which does work around the Bay Area relating to environmental aesthetics and writing.

He's the guy that runs Small Press Traffic, right?

^^ if you have stumbled across this and you are someone I know and actually in addition to "working" for rent/food I also "borrowed money from you," I'm sorry

class til noon, work til eight, read/write til two

did you have a social life??

umm it wasn't necessarily the most fun year of my life, but I do remember going out a decent amount! also getting annoyed that people would (very politely) call me every other night to tell me they were headed to the bar, as if they hadn't figured out that I was invariably in QUEENS, at WORK. I dunno, weekends and the odd night off -- I was more bothered by the 1.5-hour commute and always eating the $2.50 turkey plate at the convenience store.

although I guess one time around 3 in the morning I realized I was having a conversation with my TV

for the past year i've lived off of:
- tacos from the cheapest places
- chinese pressed tofu that lasts for four meals and is delicious and costs one dollar
- deals on chicken legs and thighs at Safeway

thank god i take supplements.

also yes sarahel, David Buuck runs SPT...which is associated with my MFA program at CCA...where they've paid for about 1/2 of my time? can't remember my most recent financial award, but they definitely have taken some certain amount of pity on me b/c i am poor.

also yes sarahel, David Buuck runs SPT...which is associated with my MFA program at CCA.

I see J0seph Le4se several times a week at the Whole Foods.

I'm not sure yet about the best way to market the Grad School Diet, but I assume it would just involve people sending me all their money and then having to walk around all day searching for the cheapest bag of lentils

sarahel, i have much to say about the man, but i cannot right here. if you want to know, message me.

Do students really subsist on lentils?
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40127000/gif/_40127544_students_203152.gif

Like Que, I'm aghast at taking out loans in careers in which the possibility of landing a job that will repay the loans is almost non-existent. I know it happens -- I see this at the university all the time -- but we're still a commuter campus (most students live at home).

The thing is, a lot of people get the MFA thinking that if they don't make it as a writer, artist, musician, etc. they can get a teaching position to pay the bills. However, there are lot more people thinking this than there are full time teaching positions, or even part time ones that pay well.

the possibility of landing a job that will repay the loans is almost non-existent

I assume you have MFA programs at least partly in mind here(?), and just to be fair, this isn't always necessarily true -- it's not a huge stretch to strive to, e.g., sell a good general-audience non-fiction book for $50k and pay off your loans. I suppose it just depends on accurately judging your own skills and plans and chances, with whatever it is you happen to be doing.

xpost - haha everyone I know is under the impression that they need to make it as a writer/artist/etc. before getting a teaching position to pay the bills

okay I mean that is definitely a betting-on-success kind of plan, but it's not like a pipedream situation

compare/contrast prospects for MFA grads versus NBA hopefuls.

master of fart ass

key grad school money savers in my experience: stop drinking in bars/clubs and make lunch at home.

However, there are lot more people thinking this than there are full time teaching positions, or even part time ones that pay well.

This. With enrollment down, the number of lower division undergrad courses have dropped, therefore I haven't taught all summer (and likely won't in the fall either). I can't imagine paying for loans too.

Lentil and sausage stew or lentil and pancetta stew (over rice if you're feeling poor and need to bulk up) is my go-to option when I want to make a whole bunch of cucina povera OTOH puy lentils are probably tons more expensive in the US amirite? Things that are NOT expensive anywhere are eggs and potatoes so another go-to for Americans could be the Spanish omelette.

^^^here concludes this episode of Recipe Corner...

lentils are cheap but not cheaper than ramen! (counting prep time)
how long are you supposed to soak lentils?

you soak them until your money runs out, and then you eat them

in grad school you seriously had time to prepare lentils?

for me it was burritos, pizza by the slice, and mac and cheese

I always thought you soaked lentils until they turned into money.

ramen carries the hidden expense of being pretty bad 4 u though

1 - the NY Times coverage of health care is a joke.
2 - its coverage of poverty is mainly confined to the Metro section, whose greatness has scarcely dimmed over the eyars
3 - there is some OK-to-good stuff on immigration, though a weird lack of follow-up
4 - housing crisis involves gigantic pools of money + homebuyer angst = ding ding ding ding
5 - general economics of working and middle classes: again this is almost exclusively a metro section phenomenon

perhaps i am a little harsh but i don't think it's by much

i shouldn't really get into this for assorted reasons, but most of those things aren't true. (especially about the metro section -- which definitely does a lot of good stuff, but has no monopoly on stories about poverty or the working class.) i mean, with 100-plus stories a day, anybody could put together a dossier to indict or praise the paper on all sorts of different grounds. this thread being a fine and entertaining example. but crossing over from making fun of these particular stories to a broader indictment of the whole enterprise is pretty unfair and wouldn't withstand the scrutiny of a search engine. in any given week, there's a lot of good and serious journalism done there. (and just as an e.g. on health care, here's a collection of the recent coverage, including editorials, op-eds, columns, etc.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/fashion/23nostalgia.html

“Nostalgia comforts people and the Millennials are probably craving comfort right now.”

Jeff Taylor, a 24-year-old media analyst in Arlington, Va., agreed.

“Sept. 11 was a moment where our generation took a second to think,” he said. “We grew up quicker because of it.”

Mr. Taylor, who was a sophomore in high school on that day, sees the appeal of the Blink-182 reunion tour...

I used to find the Style section repellant... then laughable... thanks to this thread I now read it as utterly deadpan, deeply mordant social critique... seriously I could read those lines over and over. ALMOST EVERY WORD IS PERFECT.

(They can’t fly, but still compete with brooms between their legs.)

what tips it into kitsch is that all these style articles are DEADLY SERIOUS! it would be totally inoffensive if the writers were explicit about being the fluff that they are - i guess they all harbor ambitions of working for the serious sections some day though?

whereas the phrase "sees the appeal of the Blink 182 reunion tour" is a serious lol here.

"a 24-year-old media analyst"

What is this? Does it involve ringtones?

Blink 182 song about nostalgia for pre-9/11 would be ace.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/30/garden/30prewar_600.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/garden/30prewar.html?_r=1

Leave it to the NYT to reveal the new Arcade Fire album cover.

For those of you who were wondering how long it would take the decor from Les Trois Garçons in Lonfdon to go overground...eight years.

funny how these antiquarians manage to avoid any brush with the classes of people who would have made up the vast preponderance of the eras they fetishize - sort of like how everyone's reincarnated from like, amelia earhart rather than ollie the baker

bet these guys go to a lot of World Inferno Friendship Society concerts