5 ms·

The Federal Writers’ Project fueled the cultural ferment of the New Deal era

34 points by acsillag 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
redis_mlc 5y ago
Likewise, the MSM (CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, etc.) today is a jobs program for hacks who don't really want to report on facts. If you follow them, their retraction rate on major stories in the past 2 years is close to 100% - they're literally fake news.
bluetonium 5y ago
"And yet it was built and defended, with the still-unpopular argument that writers are in fact people, and they need to eat, too." I understand "freelance writer," or "professional writer" as definitions - but in the age of social media, is it accurate to still think of "writers" writ large as a contiguous defined class of special people separate from the general public?
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Yes and no. Just like software, it's a craft and people that practice get better. Go meet a struggling writer and you'll see that for yourself. They produce, it's good stuff, and worse people get the good gigs by roll of the dice. Supporting people like that is great.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  >”the still-unpopular argument that writers are in fact people, and they need to eat, too." I hate hate hate this kind of sophistry. I really wish English had a concise word to describe this kind of underhanded rhetoric. I don’t think the federal government should be employing writers simply to employ people who write. Therefore, I do not think writers are people, and furthermore, they do not deserve to eat.
arcticbull 5y ago
Low-value post on my part but I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be foment, not ferment.
- toast0 5y ago
  If only we had a Federal Editors' Project right about now.
- naravara 5y ago
  No it’s ferment. It can also be used to describe something that’s intensely active or roiling. Sort of like how juice or malt starts to bubble and foam as yeast works on it.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Heh, there's some overlap between the terms but foment is likely the right one. For others curious: > When change is a brewin', remember: to ferment is to cause a chemical change to food or drink, like turning grapes into wine, but to foment is to stir up trouble, like turning a group of people into an angry mob. [1] [1] vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/ferment-foment/
    - naravara 5y ago
      Nah it's definitely ferment. "Cultural ferment" is a pretty well established stock phrase going back forever. https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=%22cultural%20ferment%22 https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=%22cultural%20ferment%22
brodouevencode 5y ago
With so many unfilled positions - in restaurants, retail, construction, etc. - is yet another government program really the answer? There's plenty of opportunity in the free market to be had. This reads like an ode to a more romantic time, as misguided as even that might be.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  You'd rather a promising writer serve dishes than write? Would you say that about someone who could code?
  - weimerica 5y ago
    In the age of Amazon print-on-demand, social media, and Patreon, if you cannot make money writing I sincerely question your promise as a writer.
    - ggm 5y ago
      Precisely because of the explosion of non-professional writing in these channels, paid writing has dropped in income and effectiveness. That said, the story of the impoverished author was old when "new grub st" was written by George Gissing in 1891 (its a good, depressing read btw) TL;DR patreon makes things worse not better. Kindle destroyed the revenue stream in traditional publishing, for Amazon's net benefit.
      - weimerica 5y ago
        How did it destroy revenue streams exactly? I’ve just never understood that to be the case. (Disclosure, I worked with and attended university on the dime of the folks who built Amazon’s POD acquisition - so I have some fealty (and insight), I suppose)
        ggm 5y ago
        I've used POD, and within limits, its amazing (the fussyness about KDP print-ready markup is a royal pain, but I blame the PDF standards bodies for that, not to mention the iSBN scam business worldwide. anyhoo) Imagine you have 100 troubadours, touring the kings domains worldwide, for a free food in return for a song, of which only Blondel makes a mint. Then imagine you allow anyone who can play the penny whistle to join: you now have 10,000 touring musicians, all chasing the same meal, but only 10 of them can play as well as Blondel: in aggregate there;s more music but less of it is earning the price of dinner. Kindle has 1,000,000 authors. 999,000 of them write $2 romances or how-to books which earn them side-gig money. 1000 of them will ever be good enough to enter the booker prize. Authors overall are earning on average, less because instead of being essentially broke hobos who live off the advance, they're living off the profits on $2 sells but have to work bloody hard to be "seen" in amongst the success stories. Philip Pullman and Dan Brown aside, on average Authors are not entirely happy with Kindle. Yes, there's more money out there but the jam is being spread thinner. (I was told this by a retiring authors agent here in Australia btw. She was adamant her "list" did worse overall. Other people might say thats not true, and it may be about dis-intermediation. She said the kindle rights were abysmal compared to traditional publishing)
ggm 5y ago
You couldn't get the new deal up now if you had a trillion dollers behind you. Literally, some state would refuse to accept both sides of the deal: Yes, we want the dam construction but no, you can't send what we consider intellectual "undesirables" to write songs about it. Actually, I doubt you can get the states to accept money for construction projects like the TVA and the grand coolee dam because they'd be hugely unpopular with some voting segment in the state. IF you replace dams by something more current, I wonder if you can "new deal" replacing Gas peakers and the like with Solar and Wind, and building new homes to replace ageing house stocks, and re-planting forests, and the like. Maybe you can. (I did some make-work on a youth employment scheme in 1978 which was amazing, but was a giant boondoggle to take me off unemployment lists: I went to the seaside in Scotland 70 times doing water quality sampling, and the government paid for my gumboots. I then went to university. The school of hard knocks was pretty kind to me, fish-and-chips and pub-lunches included and I kept the wellington boots: can't share footwear, government health regulations) Edit the New Deal photographers had their work severely censored. There was a post a while back about how we assume they're documenting the poverty-life, but it was a whitewashed documentary.
drewcoo 5y ago
No, it effectively sapped the cultural foment of the era. Instead of stirring up revolt, writers were employed by the government. And they were employed to make people all feel more connected, in that government's name. As if it were all a giant advertisement for the power of government in people's lives, restoring people's faith in the government. It's all part of how FDR saved capitalism through strident nationalism. Did it work because or in spite of cutting the capitalists out of the solution?

34 points by acsillag 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Likewise, the MSM (CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, etc.) today is a jobs program for hacks who don't really want to report on facts. If you follow them, their retraction rate on major stories in the past 2 years is close to 100% - they're literally fake news.

bluetonium 5y ago

"And yet it was built and defended, with the still-unpopular argument that writers are in fact people, and they need to eat, too." I understand "freelance writer," or "professional writer" as definitions - but in the age of social media, is it accurate to still think of "writers" writ large as a contiguous defined class of special people separate from the general public?

tehjoker 5y ago
Yes and no. Just like software, it's a craft and people that practice get better. Go meet a struggling writer and you'll see that for yourself. They produce, it's good stuff, and worse people get the good gigs by roll of the dice. Supporting people like that is great.
BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
>”the still-unpopular argument that writers are in fact people, and they need to eat, too." I hate hate hate this kind of sophistry. I really wish English had a concise word to describe this kind of underhanded rhetoric. I don’t think the federal government should be employing writers simply to employ people who write. Therefore, I do not think writers are people, and furthermore, they do not deserve to eat.

arcticbull 5y ago

Low-value post on my part but I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be foment, not ferment.

toast0 5y ago
If only we had a Federal Editors' Project right about now.
naravara 5y ago
No it’s ferment. It can also be used to describe something that’s intensely active or roiling. Sort of like how juice or malt starts to bubble and foam as yeast works on it.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Heh, there's some overlap between the terms but foment is likely the right one. For others curious: > When change is a brewin', remember: to ferment is to cause a chemical change to food or drink, like turning grapes into wine, but to foment is to stir up trouble, like turning a group of people into an angry mob. [1] [1] vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/ferment-foment/
  - naravara 5y ago
    Nah it's definitely ferment. "Cultural ferment" is a pretty well established stock phrase going back forever. https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=%22cultural%20ferment%22 https://lmgtfy.app/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=%22cultural%20ferment%22

brodouevencode 5y ago

With so many unfilled positions - in restaurants, retail, construction, etc. - is yet another government program really the answer? There's plenty of opportunity in the free market to be had. This reads like an ode to a more romantic time, as misguided as even that might be.

tehjoker 5y ago
You'd rather a promising writer serve dishes than write? Would you say that about someone who could code?
- weimerica 5y ago
  In the age of Amazon print-on-demand, social media, and Patreon, if you cannot make money writing I sincerely question your promise as a writer.
  - ggm 5y ago
    Precisely because of the explosion of non-professional writing in these channels, paid writing has dropped in income and effectiveness. That said, the story of the impoverished author was old when "new grub st" was written by George Gissing in 1891 (its a good, depressing read btw) TL;DR patreon makes things worse not better. Kindle destroyed the revenue stream in traditional publishing, for Amazon's net benefit.
    - weimerica 5y ago
      How did it destroy revenue streams exactly? I’ve just never understood that to be the case. (Disclosure, I worked with and attended university on the dime of the folks who built Amazon’s POD acquisition - so I have some fealty (and insight), I suppose)
      - ggm 5y ago
        I've used POD, and within limits, its amazing (the fussyness about KDP print-ready markup is a royal pain, but I blame the PDF standards bodies for that, not to mention the iSBN scam business worldwide. anyhoo) Imagine you have 100 troubadours, touring the kings domains worldwide, for a free food in return for a song, of which only Blondel makes a mint. Then imagine you allow anyone who can play the penny whistle to join: you now have 10,000 touring musicians, all chasing the same meal, but only 10 of them can play as well as Blondel: in aggregate there;s more music but less of it is earning the price of dinner. Kindle has 1,000,000 authors. 999,000 of them write $2 romances or how-to books which earn them side-gig money. 1000 of them will ever be good enough to enter the booker prize. Authors overall are earning on average, less because instead of being essentially broke hobos who live off the advance, they're living off the profits on $2 sells but have to work bloody hard to be "seen" in amongst the success stories. Philip Pullman and Dan Brown aside, on average Authors are not entirely happy with Kindle. Yes, there's more money out there but the jam is being spread thinner. (I was told this by a retiring authors agent here in Australia btw. She was adamant her "list" did worse overall. Other people might say thats not true, and it may be about dis-intermediation. She said the kindle rights were abysmal compared to traditional publishing)

ggm 5y ago

You couldn't get the new deal up now if you had a trillion dollers behind you. Literally, some state would refuse to accept both sides of the deal: Yes, we want the dam construction but no, you can't send what we consider intellectual "undesirables" to write songs about it. Actually, I doubt you can get the states to accept money for construction projects like the TVA and the grand coolee dam because they'd be hugely unpopular with some voting segment in the state. IF you replace dams by something more current, I wonder if you can "new deal" replacing Gas peakers and the like with Solar and Wind, and building new homes to replace ageing house stocks, and re-planting forests, and the like. Maybe you can. (I did some make-work on a youth employment scheme in 1978 which was amazing, but was a giant boondoggle to take me off unemployment lists: I went to the seaside in Scotland 70 times doing water quality sampling, and the government paid for my gumboots. I then went to university. The school of hard knocks was pretty kind to me, fish-and-chips and pub-lunches included and I kept the wellington boots: can't share footwear, government health regulations) Edit the New Deal photographers had their work severely censored. There was a post a while back about how we assume they're documenting the poverty-life, but it was a whitewashed documentary.

drewcoo 5y ago

No, it effectively sapped the cultural foment of the era. Instead of stirring up revolt, writers were employed by the government. And they were employed to make people all feel more connected, in that government's name. As if it were all a giant advertisement for the power of government in people's lives, restoring people's faith in the government. It's all part of how FDR saved capitalism through strident nationalism. Did it work because or in spite of cutting the capitalists out of the solution?