And he's right …

… Creative writing courses are killing western literature, claims Nobel judge | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden)

In an interview with French paper La Croix, Engdahl said that the “professionalisation” of the job of the writer, via grants and financial support, was having a negative effect on literature. “Even though I understand the temptation, I think it cuts writers off from society, and creates an unhealthy link with institutions,” he told La Croix. “Previously, writers would work as taxi drivers, clerks, secretaries and waiters to make a living. Samuel Beckett and many others lived like this. It was hard - but they fed themselves, from a literary perspective.”

At times, we've been hard on Mr. Engdahl here at Books, Inq., in particular about remarks he made a few years back about American and American writers but we may owe him an apology:

 But Engdahl told the French paper that his comment had been misinterpreted. “Everyone reacted as if I’d said that the major American writers had no chance of winning the Nobel. I said nothing of the sort; I didn’t say that there were no worthy American writers. I said that American literary life, American criticism and teaching were limited today by too narrow an access to world literature, because the number of translations and their reach in the US is feeble. Everything is focused around their [US] writers and their language, like a hall of mirrors which reflects a perpetual, infinite image of America.”

He's right again, actually, and the provincialism isn't just in regard to world literature, but to American literature itself. How much attention is paid to Larry Watson, Oliver Lange, Scott Spemcer, or John Nichols, all first-rate novelists.