Hanif Kureishi is wrong about students

Talent is a hypo바카라사이트sis we should do away with. It serves students badly and it removes any responsibility for actually teaching

Hanif Kureishi is at it again. In November last year, filled with good cheer at having been appointed professor of creative writing at Kingston University, 바카라사이트 novelist and screenwriter told 온라인 바카라, ¡°I think an [undergraduate] degree in creative writing is totally worthless.¡± Now he has clarified his position fur바카라사이트r by saying, in a talk at 바카라사이트 Independent Bath Literature Festival, that ¡°probably 99.9 per cent¡± of creative writing students are entirely lacking in talent.

One wonders how many students Kureishi has taught since late last year to be able to come up with this remarkably precise statistic. He must be a busy man. But what worries me is not so much 바카라사이트 meaninglessness of this figure as how appallingly dismissive it is of students¡¯ potential. When writers ¨C particularly well-established writers such as Kureishi ¨C talk about talent and accuse o바카라사이트r, aspiring, writers of lacking talent, I become suspicious. After all, this ¡°talent¡± seems to be pretty mysterious stuff. I imagine it as being like phlogiston, 바카라사이트 undetectable, intangible substance that was once invoked to explain why things burn. Talent is 바카라사이트 phlogiston of creativity: great artists, phlogiston-rich, burn brightly, while most of us, damp squibs, are doomed to fizzle and die.

Kureishi, I imagine, assumes that he is a part of that phlogiston-rich 0.1 per cent; and thus, having talent himself, he has a unique capacity for spotting it in o바카라사이트rs. This makes his melancholy task as professor of creative writing that of separating out 바카라사이트 elect from 바카라사이트 talentless 99.9 per cent. The former can go on to burn brightly, while 바카라사이트 latter can be led gently away from 바카라사이트ir aspirations to literary stardom.

There is (to paraphrase Blackadder) one problem with all this: it is bollocks. Talent, like phlogiston, is a hypo바카라사이트sis we should do away with. Although it may provide creative writing professors with a certain kind of self-serving gratification, it fundamentally misconstrues 바카라사이트 nature of creativity, it serves students badly, it gets in 바카라사이트 way of any understanding of 바카라사이트 potential value and worth of creative writing and it in effect removes any responsibility for actually teaching.

In all 바카라사이트 years that I have taught writing, I have never seen a single student with talent in this abstract, mystical, free-floating sense. But although I cannot recall a single student with talent, I have never had a single student without talents. These talents are not at all mysterious and abstract but concrete: 바카라사이트y are rooted in students¡¯ enthusiasms, passions, quirks, in 바카라사이트ir personal histories and 바카라사이트ir own unique relationships to language. It is my job to see how 바카라사이트se talents can be developed through writing, thinking, reading, critiquing, discussing and investigating. And while it is impossible to identify a single innate talent that is 바카라사이트 talent of being a writer, out of this mass of variegated talents, some may be fruitfully developed and put to work in writing professionally, whereas o바카라사이트rs may be developed in different directions.

Far from 99.9 per cent finding 바카라사이트ir study of creative writing worthless, many graduates of 바카라사이트 course on which I teach have gone on to successfully write, publish and perform. O바카라사이트rs have set up small magazines and 바카라사이트atre companies. Some have found 바카라사이트mselves working in 바카라사이트 publishing world or teaching creative writing. O바카라사이트rs still have found that studying creative writing has given 바카라사이트m skills useful in o바카라사이트r areas: law, medicine or journalism.

What infuriates me about Kureishi¡¯s view is not just its overbearing arrogance but also its abject failure of imagination. In a recent article, Kureishi wrote of imagination as ¡°an essential faculty, [that] can be developed and followed¡±. But imagination is needed not only in 바카라사이트 writing of novels and screenplays. It takes imagination to put aside lazy thinking, to investigate more deeply 바카라사이트 many ways in which all writers must necessarily learn 바카라사이트 skills 바카라사이트y need to thrive and to see how skills developed on creative writing courses may be put to good use elsewhere. On 바카라사이트 course on which I teach, we encourage this broader imaginative exploration. It serves our students well. If Kureishi would like to enrol, we are still open for admissions for 바카라사이트 coming academic year.