In 1974 Jimmy Carter, in his now famous Law Day Speech, said:

"In general, the powerful and influential in our society shape the laws and have a great influence on the legislature of Congress. This creates a reluctance to change because the powerful and influential have carved out for themselves or have invented a privileged position in society, of wealth or social prominence or higher education or opportunity for the future. Quite often, those circumstances are circumvented at a very early age because college students, particularly undergraduates, don't have any commitment to the preservation of the way things are. But later, as their interrelationship with the present circumstance grows, they also become committed to approaching change very, very slowly and very, very cautiously and there's a commitment to the status quo."

If the absorption of undergraduates into the creation of the status quo is essential for stunting change, we must fear the effects of this absorption on our literature. A nation's literature is, after all, indicative of its vitality. If our literature, through the university's support of creative writing programs, is being co-opted by the "powerful and influential" then we have not only every right to worry, but every right to fear. It would mean our literature is losing its revolutionary voice, its "howl," its "barbaric yawp," and it would mean dark times ahead. It would also mean the powerful control the means of thought.

We cannot displace politics from literature, even if the writer in question makes it a point to be non-political. As Rush sang, "if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." Literature is created amidst a political climate and if it is being created from the vantage point of the wealthy, by the wealthy, at the exclusion of other voices, we must be all the more conscientious of the climate it is being created in.

Which leads us to Anis Shivani's first collection of criticism, Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies.  Shivani's book, a collection of essays spanning the past decade, ultimately centers around a pair of ideas: first, American literature is decidedly insular, an insularity spawned by academics, awards and safe bets; secondly, the book's heart lies in the consistent feeling Shivani has that American readers do not demand enough from writers and writers are not giving enough to readers. The book is Shivani's attack and response to a literary landscape that more often than not fails to reward the effort put out for reading. In short, Against the Workshop is a plea for a more engaged, vital literature from the culture that spawned Whitman, Hemingway, Kerouac, Melville, Faulkner, Kesey, d.a. levy, Jack Micheline, Hunter S. Thompson, Diane di Prima, Simon Ortiz, Vachel Lindsay, Nelson Algren, James Dean, Edward Abbey, Jelly Roll Morton and a host of other rebels, prophets, madmen and saints.

Shivani is fully aware of the grand sweeping history of literature and when he reads a book that falls short of the promise of such a magnificent history, he uses surgical logic or a rapier wit to dissect the failure's issues. In showing why, how and where so many writers have failed he sets a path that shows what to do. By knowing what not to do, we are aware of what is right. And his collection, like our best critics, forces us to re-examine how we read and how we write. It is nothing short of a triumph, a book to shelve next to the criticism of Poe, Longinus, Randall Jarrell, William Logan, Harold Bloom and Nelson Algren's neglected gem Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway all the Way.

The book alternates between Shivani's reviews, essays, and provocations. While Shivanis sings hard in the reviews and essays, it is in the provocations that he shines. Whether they are written as satire ("The Agent's Letter" and "Publisher's Reader's Notes on Recent Submission" are both laugh-out-loud funny and brilliantly caustic and insightful), or as polemics designed to push readers and writers to the creation of a literature more in tune with both our history and the coming future, Shivani's wit, playfulness and passion burst through the pages. While it would be easy for a critic to put out a collection of scathing reviews without offering alternatives, Shivani takes the grander step and uses his polemics and provocations to argue for the possibilities of literature and to offer a way out. As he writes in his "New Rules for Writing Fiction":  "A darkness is at hand, when it's not outright twilight, the worst of all conditions for navigation. The beginnings of language are once again palpable. The future of the novel has never been brighter." It's a Nietzschean argument and one well worth heeding amidst empire's collapse: when everyone pursues destruction, the only available fighting force is creation. Out of old ruins new celebrations will sing. This celebration of possibility gives Against the Workshop its revelatory spirit. And it is this level of balance, between attack and answer, which elevates Shivani's writing far above the norm for criticism today. Too many "critics" are sport coat loving professors making commentary on genres they do not have the backbone to work within. 

Because Shivani is a poet, short story writer (see his debut collection Anatolia and Other Stories) and a novelist, his criticism comes not from an academic need to publish or perish, but a sustained struggle with the act of writing itself. The struggle of the creator, of the artist, is one of knowing what could be versus what is. It is the knowledge of what one wants to achieve versus what one is capable of achieving in the moment. Our best stories, novels and poems are always the next ones we write. This knowledge runs like platelets in the blood throughout Shivani's collection. With each writer he champions (Teddy Wayne, Dave Brinks, C.D. Wright, Benjamim Alire Saenz, Carrie Fountain, Torsten Krol, David Rhodes to name a few) you are always given the sense these are writers whom leave the reader one step closer to greater possibility, to a more complete understanding. And while "there are plenty of glimpses...as to what that next language could be," as Shivani writes, he never names that next language, always hoping his readers will figure it out and write it for all to hear.

This is not to say that I agreed with all of Shivani's arguments in Against the Workshop. I didn't by any means. And that was the joy of reading the book. For each disagreement I had with Shivani I found his arguments so compelling, so carefully wrought, it pushed my own thinking, my own stances, further. This type of engagement opens a series of dialogues between reader and writer that will only enhance our literature's future.

Shivani's Pushcart Prize winning essay, "The MFA/Creative Writing System Is A Closed, Undemocratic Medieval Guild System That Represses Good Writing," is the final piece in the collection. In many ways it serves as a final hard punctuation point to this carefully  sequenced book. Whether you disagree with his thesis or not is irrelevant. It is essential reading regardless. Because by looking at a system fully can we engage it enough to drive it toward a point where its shortcomings recede into the past. But, the essay should be read in its position in the book, at the end, after you've gone through the rest of it, processed it, weighed your own thoughts against Shivani's and seen how your own reading has or has not changed. Then, after finishing Shivani's book you can think about Carter's warning about "reluctance to change" and the preservation of the status quo. As you do so, think then of Henry Miller's words:

The cult of art reaches its end when it exists only for a precious handful of men and women. Then it is no longer art but the cipher language of a secret society for the propagation of meaningless individuality. Art is something which stirs men's passions, which gives vision, lucidity, courage and faith.

There is no other critic today that celebrates an Art of vision, passion and courage with as much force and joy as Anis Shivani.

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