LitStack & The Substack MFA
A communal balancing act
I’ve been devouring the pieces of MFA and anti-MFA, gatekeepers and anti-gatekeepers that
has put out over the last several weeks. It is increasingly unlikely that I will ever get an MFA myself, so I have a deep curiosity on what benefits I may miss (and if those benefits are worth the literal price of admission). Similarly, I have never attempted to shop a novel or acquire an agent, so I have interest in understanding the cost-benefit analysis of pursuing traditional publishing.1Recently,
wrote an anti-MFA essay that closed with an insightful critique of Substack and the Substack literary subculture/community (‘LitStack’ from here on out). In it, Cash relates of the story of his MFA group’s outcast, Kim L. Kim L. is lacerating in the feedback and breaks the social norms of the MFA. Cash portrays him as sort of Bartleby the Scrivener whose presence undermines the social foundations of the MFA and exposes it for a glorified credentialling program.
Kim L. is the artist’s artist — unconcerned with the “trivialities” of marketability, consumerism, and social mores — he was awakened to literature’s possibilities, and he is in pursuit of that ars gratia artis that we all, in our best moments, pursue. For better or worse we do not live in a world that allows us to dwell in those best moments. Even if we could escape the necessities of our current systems, it would be a lonely existence to live on in that pursuit, without the friends and acquaintances one acquires through observing social norms. Eventually, Kim L. drops the class — “unwilling to be a constructive member of the workshop” — never to be heard from again.
Cash’s story is illustrative of the issues with MFA: cliques, a focus on marketability and networking, groupthink, and the ineffectiveness of amateur feedback. What Cash’s coda makes me clear in its critique of Substack and LitStack is that these issues are not inherent to the MFA program. To whit (emphasis mine):
The successful MFA-industrial complex writers are mostly white and Asian women, while the successful Substack writers are mostly white men. They are anti-social media (until Substack released “Notes”), anti-commercialism (besides constant direct appeals to subscribe), anti-establishment (except the old establishment, those dudes rocked). They like Freud and Nietzsche. If they heard my story, they’d identify with Kim L. “In fifty years, everyone will write like them.”
But finally, as my inbox was bombarded with the same dozen writers reviewing each others’ books and then reviewing each others’ reviews of each others’ books, lining up to defend the platform where they suddenly found themselves as important, in-demand figures, manufacturing shibboleths in real time, I decided the two groups are remarkably similar: just swap out Instagram for Substack, Big Five for small presses, and woke for post-woke. The common thread is a self-conscious yet nearly religious devotion to selling yourself.
Let me be clear: there is nothing romantic or Romantic about Substack; absolutely nothing. It is a convenient social media platform whose purpose is to make money for its investors, most of whom would not blink before scraping the platform’s content as training data for their more important investments in AI consumer products.
Substack may be great for freelance journalists, personal essayists, and enthusiastic hobbyists. It may be the new place to launch an obscure magazine. It may rival BookTok. It may accelerate the day when every writer is their own boss and their own employee, not to mention agent, editor, publisher, marketer, and spokesperson, a conglomerate of one, human capital ruthlessly exploiting their selfsame labor. It may be irrelevant in 5 years (none of my high school students have heard of it, including the readers). It may be purchased by Elon Musk tomorrow.
Ouchie.
Cash is, of course, correct. Substack is a product, another cog in the capitalist machine, in no way better (or worse) than any other social media platform2. It is an imperfect tool for an imperfect world, but how we use that tool is still (mostly) in our hands. Cash points out the glad-handing and back-scratching of the “same dozen writers” and how that’s not much different or better than the same insipidness that lives within the MFA-to-publishing pipeline (minus the pricetag).
I am personally less interested in the platform (Substack) than the community (LitStack), to the extent that they can be separated. The issues that plague MFAs and publishing will become the issues of LitStack, writ small, unless there is a careful and coordinated effort to address them. I think the major hurdle is that LitStack is attempting to augment/replace traditional publishing without augmenting/replacing the MFA.
How do we counteract the influence of the algorithm to signal boost “good” content without recreating the gatekeeper model of traditional publishing?
How do we avoid reproducing the ‘Old Blurbs Club’ of traditional publishing while still boosting what we consider worthwhile? If ‘we’ become the entrenched, how do we stay open to new voices?
How do we create constructive feedback systems without devolving into the ineffectual workshop feedback? No one here is paying/getting paid to teach or learn so this all would need to function without a traditional framework.
How do we discuss literature absent the terminology of marketability, traditional publishing, and woke/anti-woke? If the focus is on craft, how do we help to “upskill” the average reader/Substacker so that the discussion remains open?
As I’ve learned from reading all these competing perspectives/essays, there are no easy, straightforward answers. Substack provides a free self-publishing platform which means — like any self-publishing platform — there will be a lot of slop (Human and AI). This requires curation in order to create an effective “scene,” which can naturally lead to gatekeeping, cliques, unwritten rules, et cetera. It behooves3 the LitStack community to not just signal boost, but to also elucidate why something is being boosted. And that also means trying to identify flaws and provide constructive feedback, and to use examples from extant literature.
I am no expert on any of this, but as part of my Substack Summer series I’m actively looking for things I like and don’t like in each of the books I’m reading. I want to provide feedback — your mileage may vary on its constructiveness — to the authors. I’m not James Wood or Harold Bloom, but I try to say why such-and-such didn’t work for me. I figure a couple thoughtful bullets outweigh a thousand empty platitudes.
When I asked for feedback on my short fiction, I was pleased to receive so much positive encouragement (a reason to love this LitStack community), but I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little disappointed that no one said “hey, this is shit” … or, you know, the constructive equivalent. If I keep pumping out garbage and people are nice to me because I’m (genuinely) nice to them and they don’t want to hurt my feelings, then I become part of the problem: more slop gumming up the works.
I’m still a newcomer to this scene and I’ve appreciated the warm welcome and — unlike Kim L. — I do hope not to step on any toes. I am (selfishly) trying to supplant an MFA with the wealth of talent and knowledge that’s available largely for free on Substack. I want to give back and be part of that ecosystem. I willing to be a constructive member of the workshop.
My bet is that there are more like me out there. We chased our own Kim L. phantoms and wound up here.
This is putting the cart several miles in front of the horse, as I don’t even have a draft manuscript, but the ‘best’ way to procrastinate writing is to daydream and problem solve for problems I don’t have… yet.
FWIW, Substack is the only platform where there is even a possibility of good-faith debate amidst people who don’t share the same woke/anti-woke/post-woke hivemind. The algorithm has not yet siloed everyone into echo chambers, nor become a firehouse of ragebait.
Sorry, I love this word.
It’s a very sad essay about how academia destroys a person’s creativity and their dreams, leaving them cynical, bitter and suspicious of anything that reminds them of what they experienced while in grad school.
MFAs aren’t the only programs that drain the creative souls from people. PhDs are far worse.
Genuinely mean this. You’re coming out the gate hot with your review/essays and tapping into this. Well done, V.