Government largesse for writers and readers
During the Great Depression, the government established the Works Progress Administration. The program hired nearly 8 million unemployed people to build buildings, parks, bridges and roadways.
And it paid writers to write.
As part of the Federal Writers’ Project, nearly 7,000 writers were hired to compile local histories, guidebooks, children’s stories — all kinds of things. The government edited and published the books.
Much to my disappointment, no government program of such magnitude exists now — but maybe it should.
Hey, our government leaders have passed several “stimulus” programs that squandered billions on every silly pet project under the sun — contributing significantly to our inflation woes.
And isn’t our president using every trick his administration can find to make taxpayers pick up the tab for college-loan borrowers, who don’t think it’s their responsibility to repay the debts they willingly took on?
Since the fools in Washington, D.C., aren’t making any effort to stop wasting money, they may as well create another program to support writers and painters and other struggling artists.
Sure, I know what you’re thinking: An artist shouldn’t expect his neighbor to fund his passion. His passion, alone, should be enough to motivate him to write.
I know, too, that the greatest writers this country has produced became great, in part, because they toiled so hard on their own.
O. Henry (real name William Sydney Porter) is one of my favorite writers. He worked odd jobs to pay the bills — and his odd-job experiences became the source of his most colorful stories.
Many great writers started off in the lowest, most miserable positions newspapers had to offer. These writers include Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck, as well as Joan Didion, Maya Angelou and Erma Bombeck.
It’s true that struggle is the foundation of great art — that great writing comes from those who find a way, late at night or early in the morning, to work hard on their craft.
That’s how I’ve been working on my books. For years, I’ve worked long hours doing corporate work to pay the bills, then work on my books in whatever spare time I can find.
But I’m tired of working so hard. I think it’s high time that the government should bail me out, too.
I propose that the government pay off 1 million writers at a salary of $100,000 each per year. Our package will include full benefits and the standard four weeks of paid vacation.
The cost to taxpayers will only be $100 billion per year — a drop in the bucket, considering that our deficit is nearing $2 trillion for this year and that our debt is just shy of $35 trillion.
Think how much better our world will be if a million writers — many of them now unhappy in unpleasant jobs — are paid to produce fiction!
Think of all the prose that will flood bookshelves and kindle devices, thanks in part to the government editors and government printing shops that will produce our works!
I concede that most of the prose will be total, unreadable junk, but I have a solution for that, too.
We can simply create a tandem program that pays people to read the crap the government- paid writers keep producing!
What do you say, our pandering politicians in Washington?
Give writers their own fat hunk of government largesse and a million votes can be yours!
Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell. com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
