Becca Rothfeld

Mm.

Yeah, there was a New Yorker review, uh, by Becca Rothfeld as well that s- was really down on it, and The New York Times piece was more generous, but it...

A- and I think it, it made the point validly that there's heaps of writers that just cut and paste from life.

And she talked about, um...

We're taking our cue from a New Yorker article, which...

Fancy we are, by Becca Rothfeld.

We didn't read the article.

We saw the caption of the article on Instagram.

So before we get into the discussion proper, I just wanted to add some context for our listeners.

So last episode, we discussed the novel Yesteryear, as well as a critical article entitled Sanctimony Literature by Becca Rothfeld.

I think I picked The Grapes of Wrath...

Well, first I picked an unrelated novel and then changed my mind and decided to pick The Grapes of Wrath, primarily because I wanted to kind of talk about a book that I think is an exception to Rothfeld's position or is evidence against her position.

And the MFA, the values of the MFA program seem to have not penetrated here.

So, I don't know if this model actually totally fits now that I've read the book, but prior to having us all read Yesteryear, one of the things I also did was send everybody an article called Sanctimony Literature by the critic Becca Rothfeld.

And that is an essay in which she cites the work of authors like Ben Lerner and Sally Rooney to bemoan a trend toward fiction that is excessively preoccupied with maybe as like its first aesthetic priority or its first artistic priority.

demonstrating that its characters and by extension its author have the appropriate opinions about contemporary socio-political issues, right? At the expense of other forms of artistic daring or aesthetic merit.