How to gain acceptance to an Ivy League school!

[billhoward]

[quote Swampy][quote Trotsky][quote Section A Banshee]This is why crappy undergraduate work shouldn't get #*$(ing published.  In Cornell writing courses, we're taught not to write tripe. :-D[/quote]

They must have improved quite a lot, then.  We were taught to dredge up positive observations after each poor shlub in turn made their daily diffusion of dull, derivative drivel.

Nobody under 35* should write fiction; they're fetuses.  There's plenty of time to share your uniquely world-shattering perspective, once you have developed one.

(* this rule is relaxed to 25, provided you dropped out of high school)[/quote]

How old was Richard Farina when he wrote Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me? This is still one of the all-time great Cornell books. It seems to me that he developed his world-shattering perspective mainly by smoking dope somewhere in C-Town.[/quote]

Then there's the British concept of doing all your good work young and retiring to the country at 40.

Britney's artistry will not improve by attaining the age of 35. Good solid code is written by people in the teens and twenties. The prime age for athletes is around 28. (The International Olympic Committee, around 78.) Young writers ought to have the chance to be good, or bad, early on. The fault lies not with the writers so much as the stupid over-35 publishers who buy the crap of writers of every age ... and people of all ages who consume it. The Amazon self-publish model (you can set up a book that's printed, and shipped, one at a time, for less than $1,000 one-time fee) is a true test of an author's abilities. I have a friend of a Cornell roommate who's convinced he's a great writer and has a story to tell the world about the inner workings of sellling cars, as if you're need 200 pages to say "pond scum." Okay, this isn't creative writing literature that's being discussed here, but this way the guy won't go to his grave thinking he's a great writer who got screwed by a publisher -- he finds the $500 setup fee and later finds out how much the world wants to know about selling cars.

Blogs, also eLynah, even this post, show how low are the barriers to entry. DeToqueville was right about the middling influence of democracy. He foresaw American Idol. And Cheaper by the Dozen 3.

[KeithK]

[quote billhoward]Britney's artistry will not improve by attaining the age of 35. [/quote]Britney's artistry is best admired with the sound turned off.

[ugarte]

[quote KeithK][quote billhoward]Britney's artistry will not improve by attaining the age of 35. [/quote]Britney's artistry is best admired with the sound turned off.[/quote]And with photo from 2003.