Every couple of months, a reader sends me a link to a blog post denouncing the influence of Master of Fine Arts programs in creative writing, apparently in the conviction that such challenges are rare. Yet surely the only thing more unkillable than MFA programs is the idea that no one dares criticize MFA programs. [. . .] So Mark McGurl's 2009 book, "The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing," actually was rather daring: McGurl presumed to look at the work produced by MFA holders and find it good. He asserted that university creative writing programs have had a profound effect on American fiction in the past 50 years, but he really went out on a limb when he stated that their influence has resulted in "a system-wide rise in the excellence of American literature." Elif Batuman, an American academic and author, does not agree, and in a lengthy review of McGurl's book for the London Review of Books, she laid out her own objection...