Why does Sam Tallent say MFA programs make American fiction boring?

Sam Tallent argued on Joe Rogan's show that expensive MFA writing programs produce writers who learn from people from the same institutions and send books to publishers staffed by the same people. In his view those writers have not lived hard enough, so contemporary American novels lack real human experience. He said the best fiction now comes from Japan and France, and that the literary press has ignored Brut despite it being a national bestseller.

• Tallent named the Japanese novels Butter and Convenience Store Woman as examples of fiction still willing to be strange.
• Tallent said the industry keeps asking who will save male reading while failing to tell men which books exist.
• Rogan countered that people will read a good book once they hear about it.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Joe Rogan Experience (2026-11-03). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode