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Apologies for cross-posting. "The problem with creative writing programs is their obsession with craft," says Elif Batuman. Today's Dwight Garner NYT review of Elif Batuman's latest book, The Possessed, is a love/laugh fest: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/books/17book.html Batuman's family is Turkish; she was born in NYC, grew up in New Jersey, and is wonderfully quotable: “I stopped believing that ‘theory’ had the power to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing? Wasn’t the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed?” In the review, more of her thoughts on creative writing programs: “What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning?” Ms. Batuman asks. “All it had were its negative dictates: ‘Show, don’t tell’; ‘Murder your darlings’; ‘Omit needless words.’ As if writing were a matter of overcoming bad habits — of omitting needless words.” Ms. Batuman’s search for something more from literature than “brisk verbs and vivid nouns” led her, swooning but alert, into the arms of the great Russian writers: Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/fyodor_dostoyevsky/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, Chekhov, Babel. ----------- But, Elif, who does NOT drool when reading those - and other - Russian writers?! I'm thinking Gogol and Lermontov, notably, as well. I may invest $15 in her book----plus she looks a lot like a dryad! Best, Judy -- Frisky Moll Press: http://judithprince.com/home.html "I can't read my library card." ---Jeff Hecker, Norfolk, VA