Protected: This Famous Writer Is Ruining Her Writing

Anna Hogeland’s wry and searching “Fictions” contains many layers of fiction. There are the short stories protagonist Catherine Meyer writes for her mentor Anton Andros, the workshopped-to-death novel he orders her to put in a drawer, the “edgy in a forced way” yet successful works of her NYU MFA peers, and Andros’s own novels that have garnered many prestigious awards over the decades. Beneath it all, there are the useful illusions and pretenses that prop up this whole literary establishment, at least in the eyes of a young artist eager to find her place in it.

Six months out of her MFA program, Catherine is discovering that what she learned can take her only so far. Her nannying job gives her plenty of time to write, but her novel is stuck and “the new time seemed to mock her more than free her.” The former professor whose Christmas party she attends offers her compliments so vague they can’t help but be true, and compares her work to female writers she doesn’t even like. So when the most famous author at the party steps in to offer highly individualized mentorship, it seems as though the literary establishment is finally recognizing Catherine’s unique potential. Never mind that she has only read the first third of Andros’s brilliant and career-defining novel before putting it down, or that it is unclear what he is getting out of the relationship; Catherine is fascinated by every aspect of his life and “he had all the respect she had to give.”

Yet even under Andros’s attentive and encouraging gaze, Catherine struggles to find her voice. She dresses in ways she imagines will please him and edits the queerness out of her stories. She’s at a loss to identify what, exactly, she wants out of her art, other than for it to be as successful as his. Much like with the women she brings back to her bed and wishes gone in the morning, she doesn’t know what she is looking for ultimately, only that she’ll know it when she sees it. 

Hogeland’s writing serves up both intimate familiarity with the establishment’s allure and the clear-eyed appraisal of an author mature enough to find humor in its shortcomings. As Catherine searches earnestly through all that Andros has to offer, she finally begins to see—though in ways he certainly never intended—glimmers of artistic and interpersonal possibility more compelling to her than any that have come before.

– Preety Sidhu
Associate Editor, Recommended Reading