Sculpture evolves (far more clearly than writing)through formal and conceptual experimentation. People study it to find their way to the front of its arguments and to find their own boldness there. A very different adventure than studying writing, where boldness and experimentation are suspicious impulses best repressed in favour of fine conventional practices. Film is similiar, for some reason: boldness is for people who can't master correct.

Actually, August, I got my name from something my cousin, a visual artist (sculptor, painter) said about art school, that it "shines pebbles and dulls diamonds". Admittedly, I don't have a lot of inside information about other MFA types, but I get the sense that they're not as bad because they're not extra wings added to another department in the way that creative writing departments are most often add-ons to existing English Lit programmes. Basically, I think the academization of arts instruction is a bad thing; the two just don't mix, or when they do, a sort of Frankenstein's monster is the result. Another cousin of mine, an actor/director/playwright, teaches at the National Theatre School in Montreal, where there is no tenured faculty, from time to time. You come for a term, teach your classes, then you have to go back out into the world and do your work. If you've done well, you'll be invited back; if not, you'll have to find some other way to keep body and soul together. This keeps things from stagnating. If writing programmes were similarly independent and non-academic, they could only be better. Rather than do the same dumb workshop year after year, faculty would have to use their imaginations to come up with more *gasp* creative ways of teaching. And like I said before, if I was designing a writing college, a core curriculum of courses not directly related to producing one's own work would be de rigueur. As it stands now, grad writing programmes are comfort zones, for both faculty and students, and comfort has never led to the production of compelling art.

As it stands now, grad writing programmes are comfort zones, for both faculty and students, and comfort has never led to the production of compelling art.

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The great Greek philosophers and artsits were all very comfortable. It was their comfort (no need to work, lots of money, etc.) that allowed them to create their masterpieces.

Certainly trouble, discomfort, trauma and the like inspire a lot of great art, but great art (especially writing) is rarely written in those "zones." It is produced later, in a more comfortable time.

Speaking more of psychological than material comfort.

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