Fairy Tale as MFA Antidote
February 5, 2023 8:24 AM Subscribe
Fairy Tale as MFA Antidote by Lincoln Michel: Some writing advice from the stories that eschew all the writing advice
genpfault, yes. And to put that in context: it is becoming increasingly difficult to get any sort of publishing deal or make any sort of a living as a writer without having an MFA in creative writing. Which has so many implications for accessibility and diversity, both for people who want to write and for what is available to read, but in terms of this article there is a worry that because pretty much all MFA programs are based on the model of the Iowa Writers' Workshop that there is a noticeable lack of pedagogical diversity, and consequently stylistic diversity among graduates, and that this has made for something of a literary monoculture. And this article is trying to push back against that monoculture tendency.
If you want to know more, The Program Era, by Mark McGurl, does a really good job of spelling out the history of creative writing programs in the USA.
posted by spindle at 10:18 AM on February 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
If you want to know more, The Program Era, by Mark McGurl, does a really good job of spelling out the history of creative writing programs in the USA.
posted by spindle at 10:18 AM on February 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
This is a quibble, but I'm pretty sure that fairy tales are far from being "some of humanity’s oldest stories." Beast fables, myths, epics, and the Bible and cognate near eastern texts are old. But very few of what we think of as fairy tales are more than a few hundred years old, more recent than Shakespeare for example. Maybe Cinderella, I think, though not in the version most Americans know, which has balls and carriages and other early modern things in it. And many well-known fairy tales were written in the seventeenth through nineteenth century, by Perrault, Andersen, etc.
All the more reason to take them as models for contemporary creative writing I suppose.
posted by sy at 11:05 AM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
All the more reason to take them as models for contemporary creative writing I suppose.
posted by sy at 11:05 AM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure that that's true, sy. The recorded or so-called canonical versions of fairy tales stem back to eras where printing presses suddenly became available, yes. But fairy tale as folkloric tradition extends back way further, to the point where you can find references to fairy tales in some of the oldest religious texts. (And of course the line there blurs, because a lot of religions have texts that more-or-less operate in the vein of fairy tales.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:12 AM on February 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 11:12 AM on February 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
But fairy tale as folkloric tradition extends back way further, to the point where you can find references to fairy tales in some of the oldest religious texts.
I suspect a lot of them started as "just so" stories to explain natural phenomena. Though with a fairy tale like Noah's ark, it could be the other way around: the just so narrative about the rainbow could have been glued on to earlier legends of a great flood.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:48 AM on February 5, 2023
I suspect a lot of them started as "just so" stories to explain natural phenomena. Though with a fairy tale like Noah's ark, it could be the other way around: the just so narrative about the rainbow could have been glued on to earlier legends of a great flood.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:48 AM on February 5, 2023
I should clarify what I mean (at the risk of derailing--this is a hobbyhorse of mine).
All cultures tell stories--fables, legends, aetiological myths, myths connected with ritual practices, etc. In the 21c United States people often use "fairy tale" to refer to a narrower set of stories, usually fantastical but not religious, featuring a soft-focus medieval/early modern setting and having the flat characters and nowhere settings the article discusses. Examples include Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, the Little Mermaid, Pinocchio. People often imagine that these are deeply rooted in ancient oral traditions. In fact, our fairy tale canon in this narrower sense is mostly pretty recent, certainly far newer than the 15c introduction of printing in the West. And there is an older canon of vernacular narratives--the Golden Legend, for instance--that is more or less forgotten today. If the Noah's ark story counts for you as a fairy tale, you're using the word differently than I do and what I say doesn't apply.
posted by sy at 12:02 PM on February 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
All cultures tell stories--fables, legends, aetiological myths, myths connected with ritual practices, etc. In the 21c United States people often use "fairy tale" to refer to a narrower set of stories, usually fantastical but not religious, featuring a soft-focus medieval/early modern setting and having the flat characters and nowhere settings the article discusses. Examples include Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, the Little Mermaid, Pinocchio. People often imagine that these are deeply rooted in ancient oral traditions. In fact, our fairy tale canon in this narrower sense is mostly pretty recent, certainly far newer than the 15c introduction of printing in the West. And there is an older canon of vernacular narratives--the Golden Legend, for instance--that is more or less forgotten today. If the Noah's ark story counts for you as a fairy tale, you're using the word differently than I do and what I say doesn't apply.
posted by sy at 12:02 PM on February 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Back in the days before Twitter went kablooie, I could always rely on my tweeps to talk enough about a Lincoln Michel post enough to let me know if I should read it. It's harder these days with fewer people there! But this is a good one. Anything that gets would-be writers to learn that there are other models than what they're most exposed to--and, critically, the advice they are most exposed to--is a good thing.
If you're interested in the culture of contemporary fiction & the education of U.S. writers, after you read McGurl, try MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. After that (or before that), try "The Program Era and the Mainly White Room."
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:25 PM on February 5, 2023
If you're interested in the culture of contemporary fiction & the education of U.S. writers, after you read McGurl, try MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. After that (or before that), try "The Program Era and the Mainly White Room."
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:25 PM on February 5, 2023
Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted: I'm not sure that that's true, sy.
People have been writing and telling short tales for as long as humans have been human, but the fairy tale as a genre of narrative is relatively young. They started out as racy stories aristocrats would recount to each other in French salons in the late 17th Century. This new genre was then heavily influenced by the Thousand and One Nights, translated into French in the first couple of decades of the 18th Century, and from then on taken up by authors who wrote their own fairy tales. This tradition was then were recast in the middle of the 19th Century as stories for children by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, and others. I'd like to note that while the children's versions generally fit the classification offered by Michel, the earlier stories, even as late as those by H. C. Andersen, are very different.
posted by Kattullus at 12:34 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
People have been writing and telling short tales for as long as humans have been human, but the fairy tale as a genre of narrative is relatively young. They started out as racy stories aristocrats would recount to each other in French salons in the late 17th Century. This new genre was then heavily influenced by the Thousand and One Nights, translated into French in the first couple of decades of the 18th Century, and from then on taken up by authors who wrote their own fairy tales. This tradition was then were recast in the middle of the 19th Century as stories for children by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, and others. I'd like to note that while the children's versions generally fit the classification offered by Michel, the earlier stories, even as late as those by H. C. Andersen, are very different.
posted by Kattullus at 12:34 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
sy: And there is an older canon of vernacular narratives--the Golden Legend, for instance--that is more or less forgotten today.
Kattullus: They started out as racy stories aristocrats would recount to each other in French salons in the late 17th Century.
[googles Golden Legend]
So European short stories went from church miracle stories to aristocratic sex stories? I'm sure there's a half-baked theory to be had here about church and state...
posted by clawsoon at 12:40 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Kattullus: They started out as racy stories aristocrats would recount to each other in French salons in the late 17th Century.
[googles Golden Legend]
So European short stories went from church miracle stories to aristocratic sex stories? I'm sure there's a half-baked theory to be had here about church and state...
posted by clawsoon at 12:40 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
saying that fairy tales, which are an oral tradition, didn't exist before the printing press, is a lot like saying folk music didn't exist until records were invented
posted by pyramid termite at 1:12 PM on February 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by pyramid termite at 1:12 PM on February 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
Makes me wonder about the 190,000+ years of stories that we must've told before anybody wrote anything down.
posted by clawsoon at 1:17 PM on February 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 1:17 PM on February 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
The above two comments seem uncharitable; I think it's reasonable to say that "fairy tale" is different from the category of "any story told".
posted by sagc at 1:18 PM on February 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by sagc at 1:18 PM on February 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
i think it's totally unreasonable to say that in the many thousands of years of language and story telling that none of the stories back then could be classified as fairy tales
posted by pyramid termite at 1:23 PM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pyramid termite at 1:23 PM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Another way of looking at fairy tales is something that Max Gladstone wrote a few years back: that a lot of 80s movies, especially Die Hard, have a lot in common with fairy tale structures.
One factor that comes into play for Gladstone is the idea that these stories tend to be driven by protagonists with a lot of street smarts: they emphasize Métis over book knowledge or wisdom. Gladstone’s approach is more about story content rather than story structure, as Michel writes here. But they are definitely complementary and offer a lot of ways to think about telling stories today.
posted by thecaddy at 1:44 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Story structure classes talk a lot about Campbell, sure, but really Die Hard is a fairy tale. Little John goes into the woods of LA looking for his lost wife, encounters a wicked nobleman who wants to do (bad stuff) and has to defeat him by being clever, strong, and sneaky. The whole movie opposes high modernist knowledge—Gruber’s “plan” and the building’s super-security—to metis, here in the form of John McClane’s beat cop street smarts. The first Lethal Weapon also fits the bill—Murtaugh and Riggs wander into the woods, also of LA, and end up fighting rich and powerful noblemen in order to survive. Their opponents? A paramilitary conspiracy, complete with grand schemes, political authority, and all sorts of high-tech equipment. Basically any of the “fight the big boss” stories, including Enter the Dragon, can be thought of in this way.
One factor that comes into play for Gladstone is the idea that these stories tend to be driven by protagonists with a lot of street smarts: they emphasize Métis over book knowledge or wisdom. Gladstone’s approach is more about story content rather than story structure, as Michel writes here. But they are definitely complementary and offer a lot of ways to think about telling stories today.
posted by thecaddy at 1:44 PM on February 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
pyramid termite: i think it's totally unreasonable to say that in the many thousands of years of language and story telling that none of the stories back then could be classified as fairy tales
You can find a couple of dots and a curved line on an old pot and say it's the world's oldest smiley face. But there's a tradition of emoticons that goes back to about 1982, which any reasonable person would recognize as the beginning of emoticons as we know them.
Many of the stories later translated as the Thousand and One Nights are centuries old, even millennia, but that was a separate literary tradition that was drawn upon by the writers of fairy tales. Same goes for Aesop's Fables, medieval fablieux, Arthurian romances and sundry other such genres. Fairy tales are a modern phenomenon, first popular and widespread among aristocrats and later the bourgeoisie.
To take an example, there are stories that feature a magically sleeping princess, but that doesn't mean that the "Sleeping Beauty" as we know it doesn't have an origin point, which is in the Tale of Tales by Giambattista Basile. A fairy tale is a mode of storytelling, much like the blues is a mode of songwriting, and though it incorporates many features older than itself, it is still its own thing.
posted by Kattullus at 1:46 PM on February 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
You can find a couple of dots and a curved line on an old pot and say it's the world's oldest smiley face. But there's a tradition of emoticons that goes back to about 1982, which any reasonable person would recognize as the beginning of emoticons as we know them.
Many of the stories later translated as the Thousand and One Nights are centuries old, even millennia, but that was a separate literary tradition that was drawn upon by the writers of fairy tales. Same goes for Aesop's Fables, medieval fablieux, Arthurian romances and sundry other such genres. Fairy tales are a modern phenomenon, first popular and widespread among aristocrats and later the bourgeoisie.
To take an example, there are stories that feature a magically sleeping princess, but that doesn't mean that the "Sleeping Beauty" as we know it doesn't have an origin point, which is in the Tale of Tales by Giambattista Basile. A fairy tale is a mode of storytelling, much like the blues is a mode of songwriting, and though it incorporates many features older than itself, it is still its own thing.
posted by Kattullus at 1:46 PM on February 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
How Fiction Works traces the invention of "literary" fiction back to Flaubert, and offers many examples of classics which ignore the rules. For example, Ahab is a fascinating monomaniac, not a character who develops.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:50 PM on February 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:50 PM on February 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
You could make a case for the antiquity of fairy tales by looking at populations which had separated a long time ago and had very little to do with each other since, and yet had distinctive very similar traditional tales.
If you found even a few really convincing examples, then you could argue that such tales were probably a universal feature of human culture.
posted by jamjam at 4:53 PM on February 5, 2023
If you found even a few really convincing examples, then you could argue that such tales were probably a universal feature of human culture.
posted by jamjam at 4:53 PM on February 5, 2023
I suspect a lot of them started as "just so" stories to explain natural phenomena.
But really, isn't that a just-so story to explain just-so stories? A.k.a. origin myths?
Origin myths don't make natural phenomena any simpler. They use them to tell a social story, and give the story authority by pinning it to these incontrovertible facts. Which is sometimes deliberately hilarious, like when you have a big impressive natural feature whose backstory is a hapless Coyote misadventure.
Ever wondered why animals don't exchange legs? It's explained in an Amur folktale: 'How the Fox and the Elk Exchanged Legs.' The fox finds elk legs more problematic than she'd hoped, and the fox legs don't work out well for the elk, either. So they swap back. "From that time on animals have not exchanged legs."
posted by sock_slink_slink at 5:34 PM on February 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
But really, isn't that a just-so story to explain just-so stories? A.k.a. origin myths?
Origin myths don't make natural phenomena any simpler. They use them to tell a social story, and give the story authority by pinning it to these incontrovertible facts. Which is sometimes deliberately hilarious, like when you have a big impressive natural feature whose backstory is a hapless Coyote misadventure.
Ever wondered why animals don't exchange legs? It's explained in an Amur folktale: 'How the Fox and the Elk Exchanged Legs.' The fox finds elk legs more problematic than she'd hoped, and the fox legs don't work out well for the elk, either. So they swap back. "From that time on animals have not exchanged legs."
posted by sock_slink_slink at 5:34 PM on February 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
Fairy tales do have a metaphysical way of getting to a truth, kinda bypassing logic to put the audience into a more receptive headspace.
I think I've mentioned this in a previous thread, but Reza Aslan pointed out a detail about the gospels that I found fascinating: the audience for the gospels only cared about the parables of Jesus, essentially the punchlines of any given story, so all the details in between the parables were unimportant filler that were considered interchangeable.
Hence the four gospels of the new testament have the same stories told different ways, with different details. I could see how that could make them seem mystical to later generations.
posted by ishmael at 6:00 PM on February 5, 2023
I think I've mentioned this in a previous thread, but Reza Aslan pointed out a detail about the gospels that I found fascinating: the audience for the gospels only cared about the parables of Jesus, essentially the punchlines of any given story, so all the details in between the parables were unimportant filler that were considered interchangeable.
Hence the four gospels of the new testament have the same stories told different ways, with different details. I could see how that could make them seem mystical to later generations.
posted by ishmael at 6:00 PM on February 5, 2023
I thought the Grimms collected their stories from peasants? Some of them are in dialect so if they came from French salons they travelled far indeed... or a Grimm thought it would be funny/lend authenticity.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:45 PM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:45 PM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
This seems like a relevant previously: Young women were the true originators of the Grimms’ Tales is a short essay by Christine Lehnen about the tellers of the stories that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published, most of whom were not the old wives of popular imagination, but young women of their acquaintance.
posted by destrius at 7:12 PM on February 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by destrius at 7:12 PM on February 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Literary fairy tales in the form we largely know them today indeed date to 17th century France. But some of the folk tales on which many of those stories were based go back to, like, the Bronze Age. Saying that fairy tales include "some of humanity’s oldest stories" is perfectly reasonable.
There are versions of Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin that are about 4,000 years old, versions of Jack and the Beanstalk more than 5,000 years old, and The Smith and the Devil is likely 6,000 years old. Variants of Cinderella can be found all over Eurasia, shoe testing and all, from Greece to China.
If you want to distinguish between folk tales and fairy tales, fine, but the basis for many fairy tales is indeed quite old.
That being said, this is all kind of derail from the point of the article, which I thought was pretty interesting.
In fact, when I was stuck for story ideas during the pandemic lockdowns, I started reading fairy tales for inspiration. From a modern narrative standpoint, They. Are. Wild. Things don't need to be explained, they just ARE. I found them very inspiring indeed.
posted by kyrademon at 7:31 PM on February 5, 2023 [13 favorites]
There are versions of Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin that are about 4,000 years old, versions of Jack and the Beanstalk more than 5,000 years old, and The Smith and the Devil is likely 6,000 years old. Variants of Cinderella can be found all over Eurasia, shoe testing and all, from Greece to China.
If you want to distinguish between folk tales and fairy tales, fine, but the basis for many fairy tales is indeed quite old.
That being said, this is all kind of derail from the point of the article, which I thought was pretty interesting.
In fact, when I was stuck for story ideas during the pandemic lockdowns, I started reading fairy tales for inspiration. From a modern narrative standpoint, They. Are. Wild. Things don't need to be explained, they just ARE. I found them very inspiring indeed.
posted by kyrademon at 7:31 PM on February 5, 2023 [13 favorites]
It seems like there is some level of intersection between fairy/folk tales and children's stories too, right? I've been telling my kids lots of made-up stories over the years and I find that most of the usual writing rules don't apply, while the fairy tale rules listed in TFA generally do.
posted by destrius at 7:39 PM on February 5, 2023
posted by destrius at 7:39 PM on February 5, 2023
Apuleius' Golden Ass has a version of Beauty and the Beast (Cupid and Psyche) which starts with 'once upon a time there was a king and queen' and which is told by an old woman to a teenage girl, so I think fairy tales have been doing the rounds for a long time complete with tropes and openings.
I don't think this is a derail, though, as the idea that fairy tales are the products of a particular group of well educated and socially well positioned people.does seem to have quite a bit in common with the weight given to MFA programs in modern publishing.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:08 PM on February 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't think this is a derail, though, as the idea that fairy tales are the products of a particular group of well educated and socially well positioned people.does seem to have quite a bit in common with the weight given to MFA programs in modern publishing.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:08 PM on February 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Just as a side note, the version of "Beauty and the Beast" most of us know is probably a good example of an 18th C. fairy tale with a traceable literary genealogy. A likely path it took includes La Fontaine's 1669 Les Amours de Psyché et Cupidon, which adapted the story directly from Apuleius, who was well-known at the time. La Fontaine's version includes elements not found in Apuleius that are found in Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve's version in 1740, and it's reasonable to suspect she knew La Fontaine's version--see the footnote on p. 14 of this thesis that translates her whole story. Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont abridged Villeneuve's story for children in 1756, and voila.
Thematically similar folktales also exist, and it's fine to look for any common origins they may have. Likewise, it seems normal that in English the term "fairy tale"--borrowed from the French term coined by Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 1600s--is commonly used as a cover term both for literary fairy tales like hers and also, subsequently, for oral folktales that include magic / magical beings, yet not for European folktales that don't include magic (e.g. Till Eulenspiegel or Long Meg of Westminster) or for European stories where people maybe believed the magic happened (e.g. hagiographies like in The Golden Legend). Genre labels aren't perfect.
A little less fine but still OK to me is that the definition of a fairy tale used in the article doesn't itself cover actual fairy tales like Fortunatus (1509--often incorporated in later fairy tale collections, it is very much set in Europe and calls out specific places a ton) or Phantasmion (1837--explicitly a fairy tale, yet it has many, many pages of detail about its fairly well-developed secondary fantasy world that has a history of its own).
IMO what makes these gaps fine is at least the article defines its terms, and I suspect we can all recognize fairy tales that fit them--or at least recognize he's mostly aiming to talk about a familiar kind of storytelling that doesn't deploy conventions of literary realism? An ahistorical and simplified morphological definition of a fairy tale should work for that, because he's trying to get students to write them, not become folklorists or literary historians.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:00 PM on February 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
Thematically similar folktales also exist, and it's fine to look for any common origins they may have. Likewise, it seems normal that in English the term "fairy tale"--borrowed from the French term coined by Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 1600s--is commonly used as a cover term both for literary fairy tales like hers and also, subsequently, for oral folktales that include magic / magical beings, yet not for European folktales that don't include magic (e.g. Till Eulenspiegel or Long Meg of Westminster) or for European stories where people maybe believed the magic happened (e.g. hagiographies like in The Golden Legend). Genre labels aren't perfect.
A little less fine but still OK to me is that the definition of a fairy tale used in the article doesn't itself cover actual fairy tales like Fortunatus (1509--often incorporated in later fairy tale collections, it is very much set in Europe and calls out specific places a ton) or Phantasmion (1837--explicitly a fairy tale, yet it has many, many pages of detail about its fairly well-developed secondary fantasy world that has a history of its own).
IMO what makes these gaps fine is at least the article defines its terms, and I suspect we can all recognize fairy tales that fit them--or at least recognize he's mostly aiming to talk about a familiar kind of storytelling that doesn't deploy conventions of literary realism? An ahistorical and simplified morphological definition of a fairy tale should work for that, because he's trying to get students to write them, not become folklorists or literary historians.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:00 PM on February 5, 2023 [6 favorites]
This commentary hit a nerve with me – I had realised a while ago that I dislike the "Show, don't tell" rule; I much prefer writers who allow themselves to tell, to be story-tellers.
A couple of particular examples: Angelica Gordischer's Kalpa Imperial, and all of Susanna Clarke's writing. Both quite storyteller-y, and better for it.
posted by vincebowdren at 2:13 AM on February 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
A couple of particular examples: Angelica Gordischer's Kalpa Imperial, and all of Susanna Clarke's writing. Both quite storyteller-y, and better for it.
posted by vincebowdren at 2:13 AM on February 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
A surprising amount of writing instruction is taught as if one form of writing is "correct". It's always baffled me.
Three-act filmic structure is taught as if one act, two act, four act, and five act storytelling structures weren't in common use in most other media. Spare, Hemingway-esque prose is elevated as good writing style rather than currently fashionable writing style. Exposition / rising action / climax / falling action / resolution is held up as the Only Plot Arc as if no one were familiar with the endless serialized interlocking plots of comic books or soap operas, much less other forms.
I don't know why. It's not just that you can read good stuff from a couple of centuries ago and notice the trends were very different. You can read good stuff being written NOW and notice it doesn't always fit the prescribed format.
This isn't to say that three-act film structure, spare prose, or standard novelistic plot arcs are bad, or even that they're overused -- they're very good methods for conveying many different stories. But it's bizarre that they're so frequently taught like they're natural laws.
posted by kyrademon at 3:03 AM on February 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
Three-act filmic structure is taught as if one act, two act, four act, and five act storytelling structures weren't in common use in most other media. Spare, Hemingway-esque prose is elevated as good writing style rather than currently fashionable writing style. Exposition / rising action / climax / falling action / resolution is held up as the Only Plot Arc as if no one were familiar with the endless serialized interlocking plots of comic books or soap operas, much less other forms.
I don't know why. It's not just that you can read good stuff from a couple of centuries ago and notice the trends were very different. You can read good stuff being written NOW and notice it doesn't always fit the prescribed format.
This isn't to say that three-act film structure, spare prose, or standard novelistic plot arcs are bad, or even that they're overused -- they're very good methods for conveying many different stories. But it's bizarre that they're so frequently taught like they're natural laws.
posted by kyrademon at 3:03 AM on February 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
But it's bizarre that they're so frequently taught like they're natural laws.
I guess it's not just economists who got physics envy in the 20th century.
posted by clawsoon at 12:30 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I guess it's not just economists who got physics envy in the 20th century.
posted by clawsoon at 12:30 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by genpfault at 8:41 AM on February 5, 2023