MFA
Currently reading:
Serial Killer Support Group by Saratoga Schaefer
Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison
War of the Foxes by Richard Siken
Books finished this week: 1
★★★☆☆
Where this book came from: McNally Jackson, specifically the location at Rockefeller Center.
Why this book: The Bond references in the title and book summary, the supervillain satire made clear in the sales copy, and Percival Everett. (I devoured James and I have Erasure on deck, because I finally watched American Fiction a week or two ago and it was excellent.)
Thoughts: Percival Everett is an incredible writer. When his satire is on, it’s razor-sharp and hilarious. His style and clear intelligence is what bumped Dr. No up to four stars. With a lesser writer, this would have definitely been a three-star read, maybe even as low as two stars. The book was amusing off the bat and I was drawn into the story, but the “nothing” joke wore thin for me very quickly——as did the running theme of characters being named after major historical or pop culture figures. The satire also sometimes seemed too bluntly stated, removing the nuance or the chance for readers to put together what’s funny (or fucked) about a situation for themselves. All that said, I fully admit that I may just not be smart enough to enjoy this book, and I still appreciate Everett’s big swings. My final critiques, though, have to do with the sexual politics of the book and the representation of autistic people. Something to me just felt . . . very wrong with those aspects of the book. One woman is seemingly kept drugged for the majority of the book and has sex with another character, which I would argue is coercion, but that’s never addressed. I also admit that I’m not autistic and am not totally up to date on appropriate phrasing and language, but the repeated mentions of characters being “on the spectrum” felt disrespectful, especially for a book published only three years ago.
Okay, as I’ve drafted this review, I’ve decided to drop this to three stars. I just had too many issues that aren’t——and shouldn’t be——balanced by the skill and smarts of the author.
Library updates:
As I write this, I’m just an ordinary gal on a rainy late morning. As you read it, I’m officially a Master of Fine Arts.
I toyed with the idea of going to grad school not long after graduating from Emerson (the first time) back in 2014. But back then, I was mostly using it as a way to entertain fantasies of moving somewhere new to start my “real” adult life, beyond the childhood bedroom my parents very kindly let me live in rent-free for the next four years, while I figured out what the fuck I was doing. I’m glad I never took the step beyond googling “creative writing grad programs” and scrolling Apartments.com for one-bedrooms anywhere but New York; I wasn’t ready for it. I was figuring my shit out and feeling more than a little like a failure, seeing moving home after graduation as an enormous step backward. My friends were moving in with partners or building lives in new cities. It felt like everyone was moving forward and I couldn’t keep up. And throwing tens of thousands of dollars at a graduate program I likely would not have had the mental fortitude to get through would not have helped anything.
(It felt like it might at the time, but thankfully twenty-three-year-old Katie did not make that decision.)
When I applied to grad school in early 2023, I was ready: more confident, content with my life, knowledgeable in my field, and prepared to take on the challenge of writing a book and then actually doing something with it. Emerson’s Popular Fiction program also ended up being perfect for me in a lot of ways, especially the subject matter, of course, and the fact that I got a healthy discount thanks to being an alum. I remember getting my acceptance email in late March and getting to tell a group of friends about it in person a couple days later, when we got together for my birthday, and how special that felt. May 2025 felt so far away, and it’s still a little surreal that the day has finally come (and passed, by the time you read this).
As I’ve said plenty of other times in this blog and in my personal journal, the work is nowhere near done. And I don’t want it to be. I mean, yes, I want to finish my revisions and feel ready to share my current project with agents and, hopefully, with the world in short order. But the writing work will never be over for me——I love creating and daydreaming and brainstorming too much. I felt like I was floundering a little with that dream when I started the PopFic program, like I might just give up on the dream or only write sporadically going forward, and only for myself. And maybe no one will ever read a single word I write. But my drive has been renewed and I do now see a path forward. I have a checklist in place, and those who know me in real life know how much I love a to-do list. I have this program to thank for all of that.
I forget when it was exactly that my parents and I came up with the joke that “MFA” actually stands for “Motherfucking Author,” but it’s been a near-constant refrain for the last few months, at least. It’s just a silly joke, but finishing this program, getting this degree, and having the support of my parents and friends from throughout my life has made me realize that I can be——that I am——a motherfucking author. That feels insane and wonderful and, best of all, true, at last.
Closing thoughts:
We got ’em.
