If I pledged to stop reading novels written by writing professors, would I have to give up modern American literature? Is there anyone left writing contemporary fiction who isn't also a professor of creative writing? I understand that bills must be paid, but doesn't reading novels written only by professors limit one's scope?

If the American novel has any chance of serving as the voice of the people, don't we need novels written by the people?

I adored Padgett Powell's first novel, Edisto. Lots of people did. It won prestigious awards and garnered lots of talk for its author. In the end, it secured Mr. Powell a job teaching writing at a university. Good for him, too. He deserves a measure of success.

After Edisto, Mr. Powell disappeared from my radar. His books since then have not been as successful, at least not successful enough to draw my attention. I found A Woman Named Drown in a second hand store and picked it up remembering how much I liked Edisto. Halfway through reading it, I began to get the same feeling I got reading Michael Cunningham's newest book, By Nightfall--this is a book written for college professors and graduate students, not for the masses, not for readers.

This is not to say that either By Nightfall or A Woman Named Drown are bad books. Quite the contrary. Though there are MFA programs sprouting up all across America like wild flowers or weeds, one still has to deliver the goods to get a tenure track position. I cannot say that I've read an MFA professor who couldn't write.

But all fiction is autobiographical, and the concerns of university professors are not my concerns, their troubles are not my troubles. They do not understand me any more than I understand them. We won't find the voice of America teaching in an MFA program be it Yale (Cunningham) or the University of Florida (Powell). (I used to believe it was living in a crummy studio apartment writing mysteries and science fiction, but even those genres have "MFA" programs now.)

A Woman Named Drown is a decent novel about a graduate student in chemistry who drops out of school just sort of completing his dissertation to take an extended road trip through the southern United States. For the better part of the novel he is accompanied by first one woman and then another. Both exist outside the mainstream, but neither ring fully true as real people. Instead they feel like the sort of lower class characters a college professor would imagine. A bit edgy, but still comfortable enough for a graduate seminar in creative writing. ( )