What does this mean?

What does this mean?

Anthony Doerr should have topped this list. But then again,he isn’t hip. He doesn’t act hip. He doesn’t have awesome hair or cool glasses or live in Brooklyn. He’s not ethnic. He doesn’t have a sharp cynical aesthetic and a narrow (open)mind. But most of all, he isn’t bounded by hipness. He can write from the point of view of a South African orphan, a teenage suburban girl, or any other point of view on this planet and do so convincingly. He just writes his butt off with a lot of heart and a curious mind, and it shows with things like winning the National Magazine Award this year. His new book Memory Wall is the best SS collection I’ve read in years.

The New Yorker is hardly a high-watermark for fiction, anyway. Do they pay the best, yes. Is their editorial board full of cowards? Yes. It’s just sad that they are all that’s left doing fiction in the big glossies (Esquire no longer counts due to a decade of things like the overwhelming nature of cologne ads and the recent James Franco piece–remember Murakami and Saunders, Esquire?).

As far as MFA’s go, what you get from an MFA is time to write, some good readers, and maybe connections–and yes, those in it just for the connections are sick lazy shits. But to exclude writers because they have MFA’s? Have fun reading only blogs the rest of your life. And, I’d count Hemingway in Paris as having been part of an MFA community, as well as Faulkner down in New Orleans with Sherwood Anderson. The times have just changed, but it’s the same arrangement.

Anthony Doerr should have topped this list. But then again,he isn’t hip. He doesn’t act hip. He doesn’t have awesome hair or cool glasses or live in Brooklyn. He’s not ethnic. He doesn’t have a sharp cynical aesthetic and a narrow (open)mind. But most of all, he isn’t bounded by hipness. He can write from the point of view of a South African orphan, a teenage suburban girl, or any other point of view on this planet and do so convincingly. He just writes his butt off with a lot of heart and a curious mind, and it shows with things like winning the National Magazine Award this year. His new book Memory Wall is the best SS collection I’ve read in years.

The New Yorker is hardly a high-watermark for fiction, anyway. Do they pay the best, yes. Is their editorial board full of cowards? Yes. It’s just sad that they are all that’s left doing fiction in the big glossies (Esquire no longer counts due to a decade of things like the overwhelming nature of cologne ads and the recent James Franco piece–remember Murakami and Saunders, Esquire?).

As far as MFA’s go, what you get from an MFA is time to write, some good readers, and maybe connections–and yes, those in it just for the connections are sick lazy shits. But to exclude writers because they have MFA’s? Have fun reading only blogs the rest of your life. And, I’d count Hemingway in Paris as having been part of an MFA community, as well as Faulkner down in New Orleans with Sherwood Anderson. The times have just changed, but it’s the same arrangement.