Literary Scholarship ‘versus’ Creative Writing?
Call it serendipity but while currently enjoying Elif Batuman’s fascinating creative non-fiction collection, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, I’ve noticed that her views on the academic schism between literary scholarship and creative writing have sparked a fascinating debate in print and on-line. Batuman, a formidable literary scholar, does not condemn writing workshops outright but suggests that they don’t require students to read and study the classics of literature through the centuries, an accusation I can’t entirely disagree with. To plunge in, begin with Batuman’s dense but engaging article in the London Review of Books, “Get a Real Degree,” then follow it with Bill Morris’s response, “Does School Kill Writing” in The Millions….