What can you do with a master of fine arts degree in creative writing? In John McNally’s third novel “After the Workshop,” Jack Hercules Sheahan finds his creative writing MFA degree is good for only one thing: aimless drifting.
In this novel, styled as Sheahan’s memoir — and yes, “Hercules” is his real middle name — writes that a prestigious graduate degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is parlayed into a whole lot of nothing. Sheahan can only find work as a media escort for a long parade of visiting writers to Iowa City bookstores, a job he got only because the previous media escort, also a graduate of the Writers’ Workshop, drove off a bridge and drowned with an unfinished novel in the backseat of his car.
Smashing the reader over the head with symbolism? Yes, there’s a lot of that in “After the Workshop,” but you’ll laugh at it loud and long — if you’re in the target audience for this novel.
That audience is a small one but luckily one that grows with every passing year — graduates of creative writing MFA programs.
Here’s an inside tip: Not every creative writing MFA student ends up becoming a creative professor. In fact, you could say that’s the exception and not the rule (based on my obsessive observations of the current academic job market, but I digress).
More and more students who, after entering the rarefied air of graduate school with big ideas and bigger dreams, find the reality of life after the MFA to be not entirely unlike what Sheahan experiences: hustling for jobs, balancing delicate finances, and barely having the time or energy to write.
To say “After the Workshop” hit home with me is an understatement. Had I been handed an admission letter to the University of Iowa’s graduate school instead of Virginia Tech’s four years ago, this life easily could have been mine.
And I find that a little frightening, but also a little enticing, because Jack Hercules Sheahan has grand adventures: Scouring Iowa City drugstores for a breast pump as demanded by a visiting writer he’s escorting around town, stealing notebooks from successful writer while he’s puking his guts out in a seedy bar bathroom and hooking up with an ex-girlfriend in the back of his sad, sorry Toyota in a parking garage.
I like grand adventures, but the aimlessness of Sheahan’s life — and his lack of writing drive — depressed me. This is a good sign that McNally’s characterizations are spot-on, even if they bum me out.
Sheahan’s adventures also include a hardly dressed neighbor, a high-maintenance publicist, writers of various stripes and genres — McNally’s skewering of the typical cast of characters found in a creative writing program is worth the price of the book alone — and Iowa City locals all just along for the ride.
And it all culminates in an unexpected, slightly heartwarming ending. McNally does the reader (and by extension, the writers reading this novel as either a break from their current writing projects or as inspiration toward a new one) a good turn by leaving Sheahan with a small sense of hope with regard to his writing abilities.
Sometimes a small sense of hope is all one needs to keep going. Thank you, John McNally, for that.