Does a Ph.d in Literature Make You a Better Novelist?

It seems fair to say that a Ph.d in Literature does not help one much in getting a novel published.

However, is it likely to make one a better novelist--if only by artistic standards?

That question seems to me trickier.

I can certainly say that graduate work in Literature exposed me to a great deal of literature I might otherwise never have read, and a great many ways of looking at literature to which I might never otherwise have been exposed. It also required me to think a great deal about those works and those ideas.

In the process I can say that it trained me as a reader in some ways--not least, to find interest even in works that were not "entertaining" in the conventional sense, and to read systematically.

None of that is negative, per se. Yet I also think that, especially given the worship of Modernism and postmodernism, and my increasingly dim view of that, it was less helpful than it might have been.

There is, too, the fact that textbooks and professors generally tend to be better at retailing the conventional wisdom of the field than furnishing a deep understanding of the kind that can only come with a really detailed knowledge and critical perspective--the more in as so many devote their energies to more specialized work. Indeed, I would say that the student who has an instructor who can offer an intelligent answer to a question like "What is literature?" is exceptionally fortunate in their education. And for my part getting a handle on the major movements, the various standards, that have defined modern Western literature (the stuff at the heart of my book about it), was a lengthy process that only seriously got underway well after the completion of my formal training.

Still, I suspect that that process would never have begun without that prior preparation, for all its failings--a reminder of just how preliminary and preparatory a thing college course work tends to be.