The Program Era

Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing

Mark McGurl

    • Preface
    • Introduction: Halls of Mirror

      PART ONE: “Write What You Know”/“Show Don’t Tell” (1890–1960)

    1. Autobardolatry: Modernist Fiction, Progressive Education, “Creative Writing”
    2. Understanding Iowa: The Religion of Institutionalization

      3. PART TWO: “Find Your Voice” (1960–1975)

    3. The Social Construction of Unreality: Creative Writing in the Open System
    4. Our Phonocentrism: Finding the Voice of the (Minority) Storyteller

      5. PART THREE: Creative Writing at Large (1975–2008)

    5. The Hidden Injuries of Craft: Mass Higher Education and Lower-Middle-Class Modernism
    6. Art and Alma Mater: The Family, the Nation, and the Primal Scene of Instruction
    7. Miniature America; or, The Program in Transplanetary Perspective
    • Afterword: Systematic Excellence
    • Notes
    • Index
  • Cover: The Program Era
  • A photo of the author

Mark McGurl is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.