Writing Stimulus
by Brian Gebhart
So everyone knows how bad things are right now, in just about every area of the economy. Writers and artists are no exception, though they aren’t one of the politically kosher sectors that various leaders and commentators like to single out for their sympathies (i.e. money). One of the most universally ridiculed pieces of the current stimulus package was funding for the NEA, though there is actually a great case to be made for arts funding as effective stimulus. It’s instructive to note that during the Great Depression, the Federal Writers Project employed such petty scribblers as Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Margaret Walker, and Richard Wright, among many others. In addition, the FWP produced books focusing on many unique and unsung local stories, like this one about the Bohemian Flats underneath the U of M’s very own Washington Street Bridge. I’m guessing that whatever miniscule fraction of New Deal spending the FWP represented was probably money well spent.
The publishing industry is also feeling the crunch. This does not bode well for young writers eyeing their prospects for either signing a first book contract or landing a job in publishing. The future health of newspapers and magazines looks even gloomier. The historian Douglas Brinkley recently proposed the brilliant idea of providing federal subsidies for book reviews, the paper equivalent of NPR or PBS. My hopes for such a program actually appearing, of course, are basically nil.
Still, there is some reason for optimism. I have heard from an exclusive inside source (also known as my wife) that the used book business in the Twin Cities is booming, on both the buying and selling ends. In a country with a struggling economy and an insatiable appetite for entertainment, books provide more bang-for-the-buck than just about any other medium. In addition, there are numerous literary events in the Twin Cities that are free and open to the public (see here, here, and here for starters). Perhaps, if we’re lucky, the current economic hardship could bolster the current revival of American readers.