Atwood vs Harper

35 comments on “Atwood vs Harper”

1. ZW says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 11:48 am

   This is a pretty facile piece of propaganda. Lots of stuff to protest in this world, but it takes getting their own pursestrings cut to get the artists to demonstrate in Ottawa? Has her protege’s dayjob as a doctor “destroyed his talent”? (Dunno the answer to this as I haven’t read his book, but presumably she would have to answer in the negative.) This to me represents probably the unhealthiest aspect of public arts funding: the sense among artists (or anyone who so self-identifies) of entitlement to succour. The Libs’ proposed $300 mil top-up was a campaign gambit. I’m not one to sanction anything done by Harper and his gang of philistines and wackos, but it should be pointed out that $50 mil topup, while only 1/6 of what the others proposed from the deck of their sinking ship, is still MORE MONEY. Peggy must have millions herself; why doesn’t she set up a non-profit arts patronage organization? I propose a letter-writing campaign: all you starving artists out there start writing letters to Atwood pleading for support. Forget the legislators, let’s hit up the unacknowledged legislators!

2. August says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

   I think the last time I bothered to look, all us starving artists amounted to something like 94% of all published authors across North America (I think 6% is the rough estimate, excluding journalists and tv people, of writers/authors who earn enough from their work to make a living, but those numbers are probably out of date).

   Lam may be a doctor, but not all of us are. I went to grad school (no, not for Creative Writing) and my degree is from one of the most respected schools in the nation, and I can’t even get a job in a mail room. I think having to choose between buying food this month and getting a new pair of pants for a job interview is unreasonable, whether I’m a writer or not. I’d be with ZW if the job market overall was in better shape, but as it stands I’ll take any help I can get, and won’t begrudge anyone their success. Any program that supports any underpaid, underemployed group has my support at this point. I’m sick of my monthly grocery budget having to be less than the price of a night at the movies.

3. ZW says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

   August, while I symapthise with anyone unable to adequately feed or clothe himself, I think it’s important not to confuse arts funding generally, nor grants to individual artists specifically, with social welfare spending. Social welfare spending is a major, major issue in this country, one that needs to be addressed and redressed. I include in this category not only income supplements for the most impoverished cohorts of the population, but also public health care and public education (at all levels). Social welfare spending is for those who need it; arts funding, as long as it continues to exist, should be for those who deserve it based on the quality of the work they produce. If you can’t make rent or buy food, you might be eligible for social assistance.

   I’m a liberal arts grad school dropout who’s been in and out of the labour force for sixteen years. My personal experience, despite a stunning lack of certification and professional credentials (i.e., I am an “unskilled” labourer), is that it’s pretty easy to find good-paying work with potential for advancement if you’re flexible about what sort of jobs you’re willing to do and where you’re willing to live. Over the past ten or eleven years, I’ve been supporting myself, paying tuition, repaying loans, helping to support my spouse through a master’s degree and education certificate, have purchased a house and have still managed to put aside savings. I have in that time published a book and several smaller publications, have another book forthcoming, several other mss. in various states of readiness, and have published tens of thousands of words of freelance journalism. My various dayjobs, while an inconvenience at times and not my favourite use of a precious commodity, have done nothing to “destroy my talent” nor have they prevented me from writing. In fact, they’ve provided a good deal of subject material for my writing, much in the way Dr. Lam’s work has.

   Lam may be making a good deal more money than you or me–I’m sure he is–but having seen several friends and acquaintances go thru medical training, I can tell you that his free time has been at a premium. And yet he writes. If you can be a doctor and write, you can be anything and write. If you really want to. No one asks him to write, or me to write or you to write. No one needs it. And what’s more, if gov’t funding didn’t exist, the arts wouldn’t “wind up in the ditch,” they’d keep on going–because people want them to, not because people are paid to. If we’re going to make arguments for arts funding, we have to start framing it in terms other than “I’m hungry”–irrelevant–or “it makes sense financially”–dubious because it elides the fact that that money, invested otherwise (in racetracks, say, to borrow Peggy’s example) would probably reap greater financial returns. We have to be able to make a case for the money being a good thing for culture. Given that the new boss at the CC has indirectly suggested that this has not been the case heretofore (”we need less boring art,” he says), it’s hard to believe that the existing model is a very successful one (the existence of boring art isn’t the problem, Mr. Sirman, it’s the fact that it has been consistently funded and legitimised by the Council). More money is not a solution. There is no provable correlation between increased spending and increased artistic achievement. Production, yes, but this is a different matter and one that tends to be at odds with less tangible questions of quality.

4. George says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

   Z, you know I love you, but …damn. I wish we couldn’t always count on you to give us 110%: 50 rabid dog, 50 self-hating artist and 10 naive fool. Missed a few percent of inadvertent apologist for the Conservatives. Your swinging for fun here at tall poppies, but you’re cutting down the rest of the garden.

   (It is, in part, these kinds of bombastic statements from recreationally contrary liberals like you that men like Harper keep in mind when digging the bamboo shoots under the nails of civilization. Ironically, people like me, watching misguided friends like you trying to topple the system from within, can only be reassured that for once hegemony is working in our favour. Your flailing dissent is accounted for.)

   Atwood makes plenty of astute points (in a snappy, entertaining editorial, not an essay) about how even the most reprehensible regimes understand/stood that art needs the support of the people it serves.

   Artists have always been supported by the tribe/lord/town/government. Art is not a business. It can’t be run that way. It’s not a free market of supply and demand. And despite history’s filtering, it’s not Darwinian on the macro level of present day. If it was, it would all be cartoons, dogs playing poker, corporate sculptures, Brittany Spears and John Grisham novels. And we would all be working in art sweatshops for a few cents an hour and another part of you would be crying for our liberation from oppression.

   Art gets made because of faith. It’s a need. It also gets consumed, if we stick with the biz speak, because of faith. When someone is being marginalized in Canada because of their faith, denied a living wage, are you first in line with a loud voice and pounding fist to tell them to change their religion and get over it? (No, because you’re not Christopher Hitchens.)

   So now you’ll go all biological essentialist on me and argue that art is not equitable to faith, but a pastime, a privilege and/or something we choose to do. But it’s not. It’s a scientifically and historically integral aspect of civilization and intimate human psychology. It’s a NEED. Even a biological one. And needs must be met. So do you expect this particular branch of society, fulfilling the needs of others, to not be compensated? How are they to survive to serve us? Our governments spending billions and billions on a war that wears down the psyche and mere hundreds of thousands to millions on programs to redress it.

   You can argue your form of social/psychological Darwinism, that we’ll find or create what we need to survive regardless of support, and that this product will be inherently stronger/more valuable because of the struggle, but you do that from a rarely recognized position of supreme privilege. You’re a fish in a glass bowl, chastising those in the wild for biting at bait.

   I’m way too busy to have written this because I am on a deadline, spending hours and hours pouring over a godforsaken Powerpoint (the most soul-sucking program going) presentation instead of creating my art. Expenses are rising, but I still make under $1,000 a book. Why do I do it?

5. Kathryn says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

   I’m with the red-head.

6. Degen says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 5:09 pm

   Murray,

   Good on ya boyo, but it won’t work. I’ve read three or four long, long versions of Z’s “I’m just a working stiff who still manages to make art and dammit if I can do why not everyone else?” life-story contrarianism. The issue of arts funding is all about him, and there’s a never-ending supply of him, it would seem.

   And really, it all makes perfect sense. If he can buy a house and produce a single book of poetry in thirty-some years, then of course the system is working just fine. That’s the measure of art success. One book of poetry and a house. There’s no need for anyone to be a professional artist if any baggage handler or ER doc can do it in his spare time. Isn’t that why they invented the internet, so we could democratize artistic expression and free culture from professional cliques? Down with Margaret Atwood and her criminal financial success on the backs of, of… I’ve lost track of why we’re blaming Atwood.

   The flaws and logical stumbles appear in every line, which means we can next expect to hear his arguments coming from the racetrack lobby who fear losing their subsidy and audience to poetry.

   I attended Galway Kinnell’s 80th birthday party at NYU last Thursday evening. 700 or so everyday New Yorkers jammed Cooper Union’s great hall to listen to poetry for two hours. Every poet that stood up was a professional, making their living from being, primarily, a poet. How is that possible with such meagre gov’t funding in the US? Because stepping in for gov’t are private foundations funded by the super-rich, universities funded by the super-rich, and a super-rich and super-huge marketplace that is just big enough to make poetry a viable financial choice. Canada has none of these things in anywhere near the same degree to support a comparitively strong cultural output of poetry. We don’t have a multi-billion dollar New York art trade supporting our painters, etc., etc.

   Somebody’s got to pay for the damn stuff, and it can’t be just the poet. If Galway Kinnell had been expected to NOT teach and write poetry in a very comfortable university chair for most of his career, would 700 of us have been celebrating decades of first class work, or would just a few in the know gather in a bar to toast the fact that he managed one book and a damn house?

7. ZW says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 6:55 pm

   G, your numbers are skewed. A)I’m not angry, much less rabid. B)I love myself and my writing quite dearly, thanks very much. C)Just because I argue a case doesn’t mean I have any faith in its ever being implemented. And D) If one li’l weevil can destroy the whole garden, it might be a reflection on unwise monocultural husbandry.

   I am not a liberal, nor a conservative; I am broadly inclined towards a brand of social democracy that would be labelled “communist” by an awful lot of folks on this continent–I lean further left on most issues than most NDP MPs, I would wager, not that this is saying much these days. Recreationally contrary, perhaps I am, but I have a strong belief that contrarian views are inherently valuable. Our democratic system is built around this principle; hell, even the Catholic Church appoints a Devil’s Advocate. At any rate, I have no time, and very little respect, for the “Shut up or they might listen to you” argument. Particularly if I’m arguing against the grain of my own pecuniary self-interest.

   What Atwood doesn’t point out is that the art that doesn’t stagnate into propagandistic kitsch in totalitarian regimes and war zones not only survives, but flourishes. Qualitatively if not quantitatively. Out of Stalinist Russia come Mandelstam and Akhmatova. Out of Poland come Milosz, Szymborska, Herbert. From Fascist Spain, Lorca. From the Troubles in Ireland, Yeats, Joyce, Heaney. From Palestine, Darwish. From the Siege of Sarajevo, Goran Simic. From the horrors of Nazi death camps, Paul Celan and Primo Levi. From Communist Czechoslovakia, Milan Kundera and Miroslav Holub (also a doctor). I’m not saying that artists need to or should suffer, that would be romantic claptrap; I’m saying that if the most adverse circumstances faced by humanity fail to extinguish the torch of art, then a reduction in government funding can hardly do so. Anything that can be killed so easily isn’t worth saving.

   At any rate, I’m not arguing for any such reduction. I’m saying that lack of funds isn’t as big a problem as poorly directed funds and that before we go spending a whack more money, we should have a real good sitdown and figure out how best it should be spent. And I’m saying that you and August and Peggy are not making very good arguments in favour of funding increases. Your appeals to emotion, while heartwarming, don’t hold up to scrutiny. And public policy decisions need to be scrutinised. Saying that it’s better than military spending is beside the point, as I’m not making a pro military spending argument. And saying that the poverty of one artist or another is akin to faith-based discrimination is almost too silly to merit a response. I try to make art and I make a living; my attempts at making art have never constituted a significant obstacle to me making a living. Granted, I make less money than if I had pursued a more ambitious or financially rewarding career and my career choices have been to a great extent determined by my desire to make art. This is, however, a lifestyle choice–and not even a necessary one; had I chosen another path, guess what: I’d still be writing. And sure, if I belonged to a religious sect that did not make allowance for pursuing a remunerative career, I would be poor. But that _would_ be a lifestyle choice; it’s the religion itself in such an instance, and not outside forces, that enforce poverty. Please don’t conflate such decisions with, say, the question of turbans on cops, because they’re not analogous.

   The monetary value of art cannot be fixed. As soon as you start saying artists should be paid, the questions of how much and for what need to be answered. The CC has proven time and again to be very bad at answering such questions; the default response has been bureaucratic. Bureaucracies tend to measure productivity in pounds of paper. And so it’s been with arts funding, at least in the writing and publishing sector. You make lots and lots of books, you get more money than the person who makes one book. Problem is, and I know you must understand this, is that one of Yeats’ best poems is worth more, artistically, than the collected works of George Bowering. But in a hypothetical situation in which one such poem is composed by a person who goes on to produce nothing else, vs. a hyper-productive writer who creates over six decades of “artistic activity” nothing to rival that one poem, the former writer gets no money at all for his priceless poem, whilst the latter receives all manner of grants, prizes, residencies, teaching appointments, PLR money, etc. for his worthless tonnage. This would not be a major problem if we had a system that was completely objective and gave money to everyone who asked for it on the basis of that person being an artist. Nor would it be a problem if it was possible to make objective judgments of artistic merit. But we don’t and it isn’t. People applying for funds have to submit their work for judgment. Other people, also would-be artists, judge the quality of their work–not their financial need, which is immaterial–and make decisions accordingly: you: zero; you: 5 grand; you: 20. Not only that, but you can’t even get 20 unless you’ve already published some books. What you have is a system that purports to reward excellence but has no yardstick for measuring it. The result is a glorified lottery. Except a lottery has the singular virtue of being completely arbitrary. If you apply for a grant, your success or failure is based on a number of factors, more or less arbitrary. The big one is who’s on the jury. Someone you know? If so, someone who likes you or someone you pissed off? If not, someone whose aesthetics are similar to yours, or someone who has no time for them? One thing you can be sure of: each of those jurors has in the past produced excellent art. How do we know this? Because each of them has received a grant in the past, and the CC bases its judgments on artistic excellence. Oh, but wait, the head honcho’s ticked off that boring art has been produced and wants an end to it. How could that ever have happened? Lame, boring art will be produced in any number of circumstances, but if you insist on putting the lame boring artists in charge, you’re not in any position to complain about it.

   Here’s my modest proposal: you have a fixed sum (what that sum is doesn’t matter particularly) available for disbursement. If 2 people apply for it, you divide that sum by 2 and give each applicant 1/2. If 2000 people apply, you divide it by 2000 and give each applicant 1/2000. Either that, or you put one person per year in charge of each category. That person must have no connections, personal or professional, to any of the applicants. That person’s identity will remain secret until after decsions are made. (Any relationships discovered afterwards that are not disclosed will be punished severely.) The judge will have a great deal of flexibility in determining who gets how much, if any, money: one person might get $1000, another $100,000, independent of publishing history and involvement in the arts scene, completely up to the subjective judgment of the judge. Everyone will have to live with the decisions rendered, much as they do now, but no one will have to submit a final report justifying their use of the money (this is a joke now anyway). This system will also make receipt of a big grant significant in a way that the relatively piddling sums doled out now can never be. Either that, or make it a random draw. Any one of these systems, even the lottery, would be at least is good, and probably much better–at least more interesting–than what is in place at present.

   Anyway, I’m against a deadline too. I’m writing a piece of literary criticism. If you want to talk random discrimination, how about the fact that I can’t apply for a grant to write critical essays? I’ll let you in on a little secret, tho: when I have got grants for writing poems, I’ve written essays during that time. And blog posts. Promise not to tell on me ‘kay?

8. Devil's Advocate says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 10:02 pm

   Joseph Conrad
   William Carlos Williams
   Wallace Stevens
   Miroslav Holub
   Wilfred Owen
   John Clare
   Lorine Niedecker

   Just a few “big names” who worked jobs not typical for writers; for many of them the jobs they worked figure large in their writing. But when you factor in jobs more typical (teaching, journalism, library), and the (mostly) women who have worked unpaid housekeeping/childrearing jobs, it’s rarer to find writers without dayjobs than with I think–and even then, they’re not just making art, but doing freelance and editing and stuff. Degen, your job must take a lot of time. Executive Director of the Professional Writer’s Association. Good coin in that? You must get a lot of emails. How did you manage to write and publish three books?

   Being a Poet–which usually means you’re actually a Teacher–might be a fulltime job, but writing poems isn’t. Unless you live in Ottawa and have bad frizzy hair with a big streak in it.

9. Nathan says:
   February 5th, 2007 at 11:52 pm

   Wow, look what happens when someone disagrees with the idea that arts grants are every artist’s sacred entitlement – suddenly you are a rabid dog, a self-hater, a fool, a tall-poppy cutter – did I leave anything out?

   It’s almost as if everyone lining up here to defend their entitlement like nasty little rich kids at the reading of their father’s will missed the ambiguity that runs through Atwood’s piece – yes, she obviously comes down on the side of arts funding, but she also allows that such funding creates philosophical and logistical dilemmas for both funder and fundee.

   What’s that? Doubt?

   By the standards of debate shown here, you should have been all over her for allowing some doubt into the discussion. Arts grants good! More! Me! Dissent only emboldens the enemy!

   To use that horse-racing analogy Atwood offers up, the non-Zach consensus here seems to be that, in a perfect world, all horses bred for racing – even the slowest, most crooked old nag – should be guaranteed an income from birth to glue, simply by virtue of being a horse.

   Obviously, we’re all out to get whatever money the government sees fit to hand out. Some of us see it as a lucky money; others, as a birthright.

   Art, after all, is a biological need, just like sex … except that hookers don’t expect payment when they’re at home jerking off.

10. August says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 1:09 am

    Wow, so much to respond to.

    I’ll start with this:

    First, I went to university (first in my family) so I wouldn’t have to make the sacrifices of working a terrible job in the brutal little northern town where I grew up, though I did that for a while. You’re right, I could make twenty bucks an hour sweeping floors if I wanted to live in the north, but twenty years there was long enough.

    Second, things like the economic situation of the individual artist are important, although I never said that individual grants were the only, or even best solution. There are some things that come from working in poverty/malnutrition/whatever. There’s depression, anxiety, lack of energy, a greater likelihood of things like substance abuse, etc. On top of that you can add the fact that journals and publishers are swamped, if nothing else adding an additional layer of troubles to the individual artist’s life. I agree that funding to individual artists need to go towards those who produce quality work, but if granting foundations and publishing houses were really making that their priority chances are good this would be a wildly different discussion. If anything, I think that the journals and publishing houses need to be supported more than the individual artists. We don’t have a very large market here, but we have good writers and the potential to do what the US does, and have our journals and publishers expand into the international market. But really, they can’t. And why can’t they? Well, editors don’t really make enough, if they make anything at all. They have to work other jobs and so their work suffers. Homogeneous, mediocre work is often chosen so that what little time the editors have isn’t eaten up by lengthy endorsements of unusual work and the magazine can actually ship on time (this I heard directly from an editor). Our journals and small publishers have to do design work that they aren’t qualified for and a quick look at the magazine racks (and the Porcupine Quill’s catalog) will tell you that most editors have the design and layout skills of a drunk badger. I think a little bit of extra cash in those particular hands could provide breathing space and maybe help us expand into different markets. Writers wouldn’t have to wait a year or longer (eighteen months once, for me, and sometimes no response at all) to hear back from editors and publishers. It would provide greater opportunities for the artist. Even if it didn’t necessarily lift me out of poverty (it probably wouldn’t) it would take a huge, unnecessary stress out of my life.

    In some senses I think that arts spending is in exactly the same class as other forms of social spending, but that the criteria simply need to be different.

    Will I still write no matter what job I’m in? Of course I will. But I think if we looked at arts funding as not only a cultural investment, but an economic one (in the sense that we might someday be able to become a net exporter of culture rather than a net importer) we might not only have writers who can make a living, but we might also have better work being produced, and better non-governmental apparatuses to keep the whole process going.

    I’ll have to address some of the other points later, as I just got home from working the night shift and am actually rather exhausted.

11. George says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 6:02 am

    Nathan, can’t respond in full today, because as I mentioned yesterday, I’m on deadline. In fact, I’m on several deadlines, one of which passed yesterday. But I’m not hopping on Z because of one comment — as he and you know, and as John hints, it’s my first response to years of comments and reactionary swiping at people like Atwood just because she’s Atwood. Part of my point was (should have been?) that she’s for once saying something Z should have been able to agree with and yet of course he doesn’t.

    I’ll just note that I’m not arguing about issues of quality, because I also believe that funding too often goes to dreck. But I note that in the same way I chose to ignore that elephant, you and Z choose to ignore several more, including the fact that without arts funding you and Z both would have had to pay your publishers an enormous amount of money if you still wanted to see your books in print. Does that mean your books aren’t good or worthy of publication? Of course not. But without the funding, you’d both only see ink in your printer tray.

    In a perfect world there’d be someone at the gate with the sense to keep the old nag out of the race before she hurts herself. But that’s both not the case or the issue here. The issue is whether we should cancel the race on principle, just to teach the weaker horses a lesson.

12. anonymous donor says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 8:36 am

    You are all seeing this in such black and white terms. The CC does not only fund bad art, now does it? And most writers can and will work no matter that they are funded; a CC grant only goes so far, and certainly cannot be counted on. Even if the government tops up the funding, it will jsut mean that more people can write, which just might mean that the competition bar is raised, and wouldn’t this be a good thing? Presumably, it could mean less dreck, more art.

13. patricia says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 9:24 am

    Well thanks so much for lumping me in with “dogs playing poker, corporate sculptures, Brittany Spears and John Grisham novels”. It’s always so inspiring to be reminded by true artists like yourself that my talent has absolutely no value whatsoever, in spite of the fact that I bust my ass to earn my living as a cartoonist. What I do is commercial, yes, but it is still art.

    I love reading your blog George, but sometimes your elitist attitudes really bug my ass.

14. George says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 9:30 am

    You do cartoons? I thought you just did comics. Who knew you were getting paid so well. What channel can we watch them on? And for the record, I’m arguing the anti-elitist point here, Patricia. So take a pill.

15. patricia says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 10:09 am

    George, ‘cartoons’ do not just include cartoon animation on TV. Cartoons include magazine gag cartoons, newspaper illustration and children’s books, all of which I do, without I might add, any government assistance. I don’t creat cartoons on TV (yet) but have talented friends who do, so I still do not appreciate your flippant comment and so will not take a pill thank you very much. Anyway, this is a different topic and I don’t want to derail the conversation here, but I felt the need to put in my two cents.

16. Nathan says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 10:18 am

    I wasn’t arguing for the abolition of arts grants, only for the recognition that – as Atwood makes very clear in her editorial – things are a little more complicated on both sides than “we’re artists, we’re lovely, now pay us.” The government’s largesse contains a political agenda, even if that agenda is merely to look good and benevolent and sophisticated and all that. Being aware of that agenda and being aware of the machinations of arts funding also means being aware that “artistic excellence” has little to do with it, and that’s probably for the best, given that my definition of the term would probably differ greatly from that of others around here. The money gets spread around as widely as possible – a lot of undeserving artists get some, and hopefully a few deserving ones do, too.

    It’s all just longshot seed money on the hopes that some of it pays off eventually. (And no, not necessarily monetarily, thought that would be nice.) It’s not an entitlement. Take the money and run.

17. ZW says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    Patricia, you aren’t derailing anything, you’re raising a very good point. There are folks here whose attention spans seem to get taxed by big blocks of text, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss different aspects of this issue. Why _are_ some realms of creative endeavour unfundable? Why is a readable mystery novel “genre fiction” whereas turgid and derivative “literary fiction” is art? Why is original cartoon work “commercial” whereas imitative watercolours are “artistic”? Or, as I raised earlier, why is literary criticism not considered literature? I read it as such, as do many other people. There are an awful lot of built-in, unreasonable, pseudo-elitist principles in the funding system. And this is a problem, as arbitrary discrimination of any sort is a problem. A problem that should be addressed substantively before we go throwing more money at other problems–I mean, artists.

    No, it’s not black and white, a.donor; I’ve been attempting to make nuanced arguments, but they consistently get misconstrued–thank you for pointing that out, Nathan–because some people around here see this as an either/or with-or-agin’ issue. Atwood is one. Which is why I’m criticizing her little op/ed, George, not because she’s Margaret Atwood. Nathan, you give her a bit too much credit, I think, for arguing the negative side. She does appear to, but it’s a kind of sly Socratic pose to make her ultimate argument appear more legitimate: “But rid your society of the artists and you’ll end up in Plato’s Republic, which — closely examined — is a nasty little dictatorship. Who would want that?” This _is_ black and white and it does not bear examination. The piano player is not being shot; he might not be getting tipped, but he’s alive to play another day. Even if we told him he’s on his own, got to play for free now, relying on the good will of passersby, if he really loves playing the piano, he’ll keep at it. Cutting, freezing, modestly increasing funds is not the end of the world for the arts. Alarmist arguments might persuade the alarmed, but I’m not among ‘em. One of Atwood’s key concepts in _Survival_ is “victim positions”. What several of the contributions to this discussion illuminate is how reflexively many Canadian writers assume the victim position.

    But you know what? There are an awful lot of disenfranchised people out there–genuine victims–who, if they were aware that some other people can get a big wad of cash to help them pursue an activity they like to do, would spit in your face for complaining it’s not enough. I’m not talking about people who think it’s a damn scam that lousy lazy artists get grants. The people I’m talking about would appreciate whatever resourcefulness another person employed to keep on going. But they will have no truck with whingeing. These people make up a substantial portion of the Canadian public and the realities of their lives are very rarely paid attention to by artists. Or they’re run away from. Those soul-destroying northern towns full of people who just don’t appreciate artistic souls: I think I smell a kunstlerroman. I’d like to see a funding system that didn’t exaggerate those gaps, but as it is, the abstract “taxpayer’s money” artists get does precious little to bring them into contact with a genuine, broad public audience. On the other side of the coin, the insufficient money spent by governments on education does very little to foster an appreciation of the arts in the average person. Something else that should be addressed.

    George, I’ve already addressed this question of my book being published. Again, your either/or scenario is too simple. I would never pay large sums to a publisher to publish my book. Either I wouldn’t publish it at all, which would not be the end of the world, or I’d pay a much smaller sum to a printer to produce it. Or I’d make little chapbooks myself. Or I’d post poems on the web. There are options. Yeah, if you’re addicted to the trappings of the publishing industry–all that wonderful distribution! and publicity! and allexpensespaid tours!–then the disappearance of smallish presses–tho again, this shows no sign of being an imminent reality–would be a bad thing. But again, Nathan has the right idea. It’s good luck to be able to publish my book at no expense or risk to myself. It ain’t a necessity. I don’t need it, and the taxpaying public doesn’t need it. There’s a big difference between the overall need society has for art and the perceived need it has for MY art (or your art, because it ain’t all about me, eh). That’s where this discussion tends to go off the rails, is when people say, “Society needs art” and conclude, erroneously, that society should fund their attempts to make it. Again, I’m NOT saying that there should be no arts funding; I’m saying it’s a good idea not to take it for granted that I deserve that funding just because I’ve decided–and some of my friends and even a few strangers agree–that I’m an artist.

    August, I like your suggestion that writing/publishing funding be more directed to publishers than authors. But there has to be more accountability if this is done. There are, unfortunately, publishers out there who use their funding to take vacations in France after making sure they’ve broken even on their books by insisting that their authors commit to buying a couple hundred copies themselves. Personally, I think fewer funded publishers is at least as good an idea as more money to the same number of houses. And as I argued in another thread a while back, I’d like to see presses that do artisanal work recognised, presses that do small-run letterpress chapbooks. This is another artistic activity that is unreasonably discriminated against by CC guidelines. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all afford to buy George’s Frog Hollow chapbook? (But people, if you think it’s pricey now, wait till you see what it fetches in 25 years.) The continued emergence of these really small presses is a sign of actual cultural vitality, but such manifestations are not fundable, probably because there is an insufficient tonnage of paper involved.

    As for journals, it’s a pretty sad scenario. Any journal whose editor admits the sort of thing you mention shouldn’t be given more money. That’s not the solution. S/he should be put out to pasture; the issue isn’t insufficient time, it’s insufficient interest. Most journals are scarcely relevant, culturally speaking. Let ‘em move onto the internet, where their costs’ll be lower and they’ll be able to increase their readership without selling lottery tickets–I mean, holding contests. Anyone who wants to continue running a print journal will have to raise their own funds–and the increased level of commitment will probably be a good thing for the content. The problem with most little litmags now is that they have no editorial direction whatsoever; as you suggest, they tend to feel cobbled together out of what everyone could agree on in time to get it to the printers.

18. Degen says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 11:53 am

    Hey look at that — I agree with Nathan. Didn’t we argue this same point years ago? Which one of us softened?

    Of course the diabolical arts lobby has to come up with something more complicated than “we’re artists, we’re lovely, now pay us.” I attend the secret arts lobby meetings in the underground bunker, and everyone agrees that entitlement is a terrible sell line on its own. And everyone also agrees that abandoning any argument that places an inherent value on arts investment is yet more foolish. Not only does dissent on that point embolden the enemy, but stultifyingly predictable dissent on that point is something the enemy has learned they can find in the cultural sector just by lifting their shoe. Take a hard look at the money facts of our “industry” compared to others and the conclusion is undeniable. If this is a competition, we lost a long time ago.

    Bunches of us arts folks are spending thousands of unpaid hours and tens of thousands of donated dollars on a campaign to secure extra money for the Canada Council (an institution that all in this discussion owe their books to). How much extra? $150 million. Measured against the total fed budget, this is miniscule. The measured economic impact of cultural spending on the Canadian economy is $39 Billion (and before we start question how this is measured — how do we measure the impact of the Canadian oil industry? At least with art we don’t have to factor in the frickin’ planetary destruction and repair costs).

    Z’s model for distribution of these extra funds looks just about as dumb as any I’ve ever seen, which means it has as good chance of working as any other. At this point the mechanism matters much less than the grease needed to get it and keep it going. I totally agree with your seed money analogy, Nathan. Here’s a different analogy — you’ve got to dig through a lot of rock to find a little bit of gold. Does the mining lobby have an equivalent Z pointing out impressively how much dreck needs to be filtered to get the quality product. Really, huh? I never thought of it that way. I’ll be darned. And what about those companies that find gold close to the surface. They waste far less money. And what about the ones who find a bit of gold and stop. And how about…

    Yeah, I bet they do have one of those guys, and I bet he’s pretty self-satisfied.

    What I object to is the same old immediate, kneejerk, and at this point incredibly predictable and boring response from the enlightened minority within the arts community — now hold on one minute, don’t get too comfortable in your elitist position as an established, granted artist because lots of folks have made great art without being funded. In fact, I don’t even object to it. I’m just so damn bored with it. Who working in this business actually thinks that anyone else working in this business doesn’t recognize the many complications of how we all get our work done?

    Besides, it’s bullshit. Statistically, no great art has ever been created without funding. Havel wrote one of the greatest, most inspiring and philosophical pieces of prison literature, Letters to Olga, from as low a hole as anyone can sink into, but who in this discussion believes any of us would have read it without some funding mechanism somewhere in the picture, even if it was just the measly kopecs the criminal Czech government spent to feed him, keep him barely warm and healthy, and provide him with paper and pen while he sat in prison? Could he have still written using his own feces and the floor? Of course. Would it have been brilliant? Undoubtedly. Does that mean anything in this discussion? Someone else answer.

    Finally, Devil’s advocate, good coin as a cultural pro in Canada? Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. You made my day.

19. ZW says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    Oh, Degen, almost as funny as your wage is your goldmining analogy. It doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work on so many levels. Gold doesn’t mine itself or refine itself, whereas thousands of would-be writers are everyday publishing and promoting their works–without anyone else having to conduct explorations or assays. Paying them to do this, selectively or universally, won’t increase the amount of literary gold in circulation. Whether it increases the amount of dreck is of little interest to me–like you say, it’s a boring question–but I think the unfounded assumption that more money leads to better art needs to be questioned hard. And I betcha folks were pretty glad when someone blew the whistle on Bre-Ex. The funny thing in this discussion is that I’m not calling the CC a Bre-Ex. I’m saying that after several decades of doing things the way it has, it’s high time we re-evaluate its methods.

    Self-satisfied? Given that my argument is based on the assumed irrelevance of my art to society and yours is based on the virtuous work of volunteers “spending thousands of unpaid hours and tens of thousands of donated dollars” that’s more than a little funny. Thank you for bringing so much joy and laughter to a grey morning on the west coast.

    Really, it takes time and money to make art? Gee whiz. Who’d've thunk it. Gawrsh. If the arguments I’m making are boring, old, predictable, they’re not half as predictable, and they’re twice as nuanced, as the sort that Atwood makes in her piece. And that was what I initially responded to. She posits a worst-case scenario; I say it’s not as bad as that, nor will it be. But speculative fiction is one of her strong-suits, so perhaps I should defer…

    And as with George’s military spending red herring, this boilerplate stuff about what gets spent on the oil industry is not material to this discussion. I’m not arguing that it’s better to spend money on oil, and I’m not arguing that money shouldn’t be spent on arts; I’m arguing that we would do well to re-engineer the system to minimize the amount of good money being thrown after bad in arts funding, particularly in the writing and publishing sector, this being bookninja.com. If we want to talk about the good and bad money being spent on oil, we can mosey on over to oilninja.com. Please stop trying to distract people with this, “Oh, yeah, well look what they get” stuff. Likewise, the amount of economic activity generated in the arts sector is a distraction. The activity generated in the medical sector by government funding is not a good argument for medicare and the activity generated in the educational sector is not a good argument for public schooling. You start getting into those lines of thought and you embark on a slippery slope towards the corporate model of squeezing more money out of each dollar spent (fewer beds in hospitals; more students in classrooms) and opening up the question of “If we can this much of a return spending the money on art, what might we make by spending it on something else?” You’re playing the game on Harper’s (or Martin’s, for that matter) field when you do that, and the final score won’t be pretty. We have to assert this spending as an intrinsic good if we’re going to defend it at all. I would love to be able to defend it wholeheartedly, but in its present incarnation I’m afraid I can’t do that without feeling dirty. There is too much emphais on quantity as a yardstick of artistic success and there are too many imbalances, arbitrary criteria and inequities. Here’s a simple fact–or at least a powerful probability–to illustrate this, which we can add to the list of problems that other people here have raised: by arguing what I’ve been arguing here, to and in front of a lot of people who probably don’t agree with me, but who are also published writers and could therefore be in a position to judge a future grant application from me–in fact to take any stance on anything in the publishing world that is contrarian or controversial–I am probably jeopardizing my chances of getting a grant at some point down the line. Who needs a dictatorship?

20. Roy Pepitone says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    Hold the phone. Do understand this correctly, that there’s some sort of agency which will just GIVE me money to write a book? Does this mean I can quit my job at Arby’s and work on it for four months? Wow! At that rate, I might actually write more than three books in my lifetime. If I were actually a good writer this would be fantastic. But wait, I understand there’s more? Are you telling me that almost every publisher in the country gets money from this same agency? (except the foreign owned multinationals, which we can all agree are unspeakably evil) Wow! That will greatly increase the chances of someone reading books written by Canadians! Neat-o! What? No way, are you saying that foreign language publishers can get money to translate the works of Canadian authors into other languages? That’s out of this world! Travel grants to promote work abroad? Reading grants? Writer in residency grants?
    With all this pork available, it sounds to me like it’s remotely possible that a writer in this tiny country might actually stand a chance of writing something, haveing it read, and then writing something else.
    I’m all a twitter.

21. August says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    I have more to say but no time at the moment, so I’ll just point out that Joseph Conrad probably isn’t the best example, as he was more or less always on the edge of starvation, and by several accounts was full of self-loathing and spent most of his writing life steeped in a pretty serious depression. He wrote good books, but it’s not the kind of life we should aspire to, I don’t think.

22. Degen says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

    Okay, okay Z, I feel sorry for you. Your principled stance has endangered your art — no, not your art, which stands above and aside from petty concerns like funding, but something about you is endangered and I feel the required pity and awe. You’re a frickin’ hero. And I’m so glad to have it proven once and for all that this discussion isn’t all about you. Since you have such respect for numbers, it may interest you to know that of the 4101 words you’ve written in this thread, 92 of them are the word “I”. That’s 2.24%

    Impressive.

    So my gold mining analogy doesn’t work, until it does for you, until it doesn’t again. Apparently books write themselves. You are the pinnacle of intellectual honesty. Or maybe it isn’t a question of honesty. And here we go again with the economic and sectoral arguments. These aren’t the only arguments being used on your behalf, but they are available and we are often asked to give them. My last time lunching with Belinda Stronach, I tried telling her about how you are a liberal arts drop-out, a principled everyman who doesn’t truck with this or that, and about that whole paper tonnage calculation, but she fell asleep.

    Dude, the assumed irrelevance of your art to society is the source of your gargantuan self-satisfaction. If not so, why do you keep telling us all about it in such long paragraphs in a public forum? We get it. You’re a schlub who makes art. Eventually, there will be an Al Purdy prize and you will be a runner-up, which will make you so much happier than winning it. Cheer up. No one here wants you to dirty yourself with considerations of money or “traditional success.” You stay on your grey west coast and suffer nobley.

    Since a belief in your own “entitlement to succour” is one of the unhealthiest aspects of our current funding culture, you should actually be feeling pretty fit and cleansed after mooning all your potential future jurors. Thank you as well for giving us the benefit of the doubt that we’d judge your art, not what made it. Apparently, we’re not just whiney panhandlers; we’re also all corrupt.

    I think what impresses me most about the truly virtuous people I know who lobby on your behalf, is that they’ve all heard your arguments about a thousand times, they all know you’d rather spit on them than thank them for their work, and they do it anyway, because they believe the intrinsic value of art is more important than the boneheads who sometimes say they make it.

23. ZW says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 5:01 pm

    August, again you’re mixing up the purpose of grants to artists with the purpose of welfare. The one is to produce art, the other to alleviate poverty. Like you say, Conrad wrote good books and as far as I know he didn’t need grants to do it. Actually, he wrote great books. _Heart of Darkness_, _Lord Jim_, _Nostromo_. Some of the most significant works of fiction in the English language. All heavily influenced by his working life as a sailor. Conrad was depressive and misanthropic because he was depressive and misanthropic, not because he worked on boats. An unfortunate reality, but one without which he would not have written those books, since it was central to his worldview. Maybe it would have been nicer for him to stay on dry land, sock up on anti-depressants and write pleasant novels of manners. Can’t see it being a better thing for literature, tho. Not a good example.

    (How many offensive pronouns in that one? How’s the ratio?)

24. August says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    ZW: you might want to do a bit more research. *After* Conrad worked on boats, when he did the bulk of his writing, he was depressive and misanthropic because he couldn’t find work that was sufficient to support his family, and the money from his books went to paying debts. Again, I didn’t say his work wasn’t worth aspiring to, I said his life wasn’t worth aspiring to. The difference may not be apparent to you. If nothing else, it would certainly explain a good many of your other statements.

25. ZW says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    August, the whole problem here is precisely that people are talking about grants to artists in terms of what they do for the artist’s life. But grants for artists are not for the purpose of improving standards of living for individuals. They are FOR THE PRODUCTION OF ART. Whether the artist is poor or wealthy, happy or suicidal, is beside the point, not admissable, completely irrelevant. From the CC website:

    “For grants to individual artists for their personal creative work, there are two fundamental criteria:

    -the comparative artistic merit of the applicant’s work, and

    -the merit of the project the applicant proposes to undertake with the aid of Council funds.”

    Nothing about the pecuniary need of the applicant: merit, not need. I’ve filled out the application a couple times. Nothing on it about how much money you make or what your household expenses are. It’s too bad if people are poor, but AGAIN arts grants aren’t welfare. If you have serious concerns about your own lack of money or anyone else’s, write to your MP, write to the Finance Minister, write to the PM. But don’t write to the Minister of Canadian Heritage–not her department.

    Given the fact that Conrad attempted suicide at 21, I think it’s a bit facile to suggest that money problems in his later life were THE CAUSE of his mental illness. This is, if anything, a romanticisation of disease. You said Conrad was a bad example of a writer who worked because he was depressed in his writing life–he wrote good books, but had a shitty life. I said his shitty (and fascinating, and varied, and engaged) life informed his books. It did. This is not disputable, it is a fact, well-documented. And the existence of his books is more evidence in support of my central point. God knows how his chronic depression affected other areas of his life. Probably adversely; that tends to be the case for people with depression. But this is not something that can be fixed with a stipend. He did eventually get a pension that helped him considerably, financially speaking. But through all his adverse personal experiences, he wrote. And this is the point, contra Atwood’s rhetoric, I have been trying to make from the get-go: you don’t need grants to produce art, you don’t need stability, you don’t need comfort. I won’t say that the presence of these things is inimical to art–we’d all rather have too much money than not enough, in a perfect world–but they are NOT NECESSARY PRECONDITIONS. Let’s argue for the preservation and increase of arts funding because Art is great, not because “artists” need money. Let’s assume a position of strength instead of a victim position.

    Lemme boil this down: Atwood said that without gov’t funding, the arts in Canada will die. I said that’s not true. A bunch of people started virtual-shouting. I’m still right. Finis.

26. Roy Pepitone says:
    February 6th, 2007 at 11:17 pm

    ZW is right, and probably a genius.
    I think we should cut all the arts funding, give the money to Bombardier, and watch as our writers soar like, um, something that soars. A bird or insect. Because our publishers have grown fat and rich off the handouts which make their bottom lines so awesome, and everyone knows that miserable poor people write better books. That’s why so many writers are poor. If they were rich they wouldn’t be writers. But then we go and give these poverty blessed geniuses the equivalent of a free Toyota Yaris and suddenly they’re too good to be writers, now they’re fancy pants big shots, and never write anything good again.
    But, like ZW, I think that what makes me most angry is that this “Canada Council” never gave me any money. This shows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they’re giving their money to bad writers, fools, and impostors. And for that there can be no excuse.

27. Nathan says:
    February 7th, 2007 at 12:07 am

    Maybe we should think about grants for literary debate, because it appears the quality we’re getting for free is pretty piss-poor.

    How much is an ad hominem attack worth? Should the Canada Council fund deliberate misreadings of other people’s arguments? How about a stipend to help develop new and even more frustrating non sequiturs?

    Zach’s point appears to be that arts funding is worthy and desirable, but not absolutely necessary. From the tone of the reaction, you’d think he’d called for the forced internment of all avant garde poets. (Granted, knowing Zach, that’s not entirely out of the realm of probability, but still.)

    I am intrigued, however, by the possibility of the Joseph Conrad Memorial Zoloft Grant.

28. LM says:
    February 7th, 2007 at 9:51 am

    In a perfect world, no one would pay Zach and Nathan to love each other’s self righteous fantasies of being working class tough guys, they just would. They would work manly jobs during the day and ply that essence of reality nightly into literature. yet they both still have their hypocritical hands out while their lips flap. Isn’t there somewhere else on the web you two can spread your usual brand of combative hate? Maybe that Henigan guy from Geist has a site. What if the Bookninja created one of those old topic boards just for you guys. We could drop in occasionally to say “night” so you could call us all idiots and yell “day!” And the argument would never end, because you clowns never get tired of frothing at the mouth.

29. Degen says:
    February 7th, 2007 at 11:06 am

    Actually Nathan, this is standard stuff from ZW and, in my experience, most others who argue his position.

    A cheap ad hominem attack on some mythical group of whining artists who don’t care about any other issue in the world except their own funding. An even cheaper attack on an established, successful writer for daring to take a public stand on a topic she might know a thing or two about. And then paragraph after paragraph of layered, self-congratulatory, pseudo-logical back-pedaling to the safe position — hey, why is everyone so uptight, all I was saying is arts grants should be based on merit, not need, and I’ve never even got one despite being a pretty remarkable guy, really. Worst kind of strawmanism. He dismisses all arguments against him as unrefined and ill-formed, without ever effectively refuting them. Classic contrarian manure. You want to step back from the ad hominem? Have your boy present something that isn’t the most facile interpretation possible of the original argument.

    A $20,000 ’subsistence’ grant intended to buy an author time to complete a work of art is not in any way intended to address an historical reality about the poverty of artists? Arts grants are about creating art, not addressing need? Talk about ignoring the complications of what it is we all do. Who subsists for the time it takes to write a book — on $20,000? The suggestion that arts granting in any form can be completely separated from an artist’s financial need is an abstract refuge from reality.

    Is Atwood’s reasoning flawed if she says that ALL art will disappear without funding? Undoubtedly. Does she say that? Only to Zach, apparently. My reading shows her talking about the evaporation of Canada’s arts institutions without increased or even continued funding, a decidedly non-abstract point about real societal constructs that need real money to keep their real work going. Why can’t they make profits to keep themselves going on their own — no, no, we’re not allowed to talk about the arts as if it was an industry. That’s philistinism.

    Come on Nathan. You adopt the stance of intellectual honesty above all in every argument of yours I’ve ever witnessed. When Z makes a cheap, dishonest swipe, why do you blame people for calling him cheap and dishonest?

    Conrad’s suicide attempt is unconfirmed — could have been an accident. Who isn’t depressed? During his most productive period he worked full-time as a professional writer using an inheritance and other family money as well as his own meagre income to fend off a number of creditors (think of them as the mortgage and the car payments), before finding financial security later in his career from an… arts grant type situation, probably based on the fact that he needed it to keep going with his art.

    The horror. The horror.

30. Von B says:
    February 7th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

    1) Dear Z, I don’t agree with you 100% but you make some really good arguments. You keep the spirit of debate alive. Keep up the fight!

    2) Like you, I do not rely on grants for my livelihood. Who does? I merely toil away at my grinding day job, and fritter at my diversions by night.

    3) A rare and maximum grant is $20,000K/year. Sounds like minimum wage to me! Not an opulent lifestyle.

    4) Smaller grants are like little paid vacations to be able to do your work and promote it abroad or wherever. While I have never received a grant, I do know many people who have done interesting and beautiful work on small government grants.

    5) A musician named William New once said, “Welfare is like a songwriting grant.” The real villain in this whole argument is Brian Mulroney (now being touted by some as an environmental saviour). His last official act before being chased out of office by a disgusted populace was to revoke claims for U.I. from people who either resigned or were dismissed from their jobs. U.I. was the best artist grant in the country until this point. Unfortunately, I wasted away my U.I. grant reading library books.

31. Laura says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    A first-time visitor to this site could be forgiven for the impression that Canadian writers are a bunch of coddled children. How much, and how often, are writers really working for that $20,000 a year? From 9 to 5, or 9 to 7, as many people in this country do for approximately that amount? Really? And if you’re not spending all that time writing your book, then you have time to freelance to make extra money—and there is plenty of freelance work to go around.

    Or maybe you’re spending your time on blogs complaining how difficult it is to be a writer. Try being a nanny or a burger salesman. Then you might have something real to write about—which people might be interested in reading.

32. patricia says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    Good point, Laura. And there’s a lot that ZW has said that I agree with. I did freelance cartooning on the side for 20 years while I had a multitude of jobs to support myself, jobs that 90% of the time I hated with a passion. All those horrid jobs that I had over the years are now excellent fodder for my creative work, and I’m actually very grateful for those experiences. There’s a lot to be said for struggling for one’s dream. It creates a not-so-common attitude in this day and age: gratitude.

33. m says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

    The cuts to the Canada Council will affect much more than just individual artists grants. Theatres, festivals, dance companies, art galleries will feel the cut. Institutions like these can’t get day jobs to support their endevours. They are the day jobs of many. To me, that will be the tragedy of the cuts.

34. sally says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 11:06 am

    I thoroughly detest the implication that anyone who is dedicated enough to go through the grinding work of applying for grants and is then lucky enough to sometimes maybe get a bit of time away from their multitude of horrid day jobs in order to put their writing first (or their art in my case) for a little while is some kind of privileged whiner. It is absolutely true that artists and writers are mostly working stiffs like everyone else. But art is good! We need it, all kinds of it, even the drek. Also, it’s very important that our society sometimes formally acknowledge the value of culture. If the government is at least a little bit behind it that sends a good message, even though its hard for us to get our hands on some of that money (it’s not very much money).

35. Degen says:
    February 9th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

    Clearly, we’re not talking about writers getting 20K per year in free money with which they can lay about on their divans in between spells of precious writing, and the impression that we might be talking about that is, I believe, entirely the responsibility of those who continue to suggest it to satisfy their rhetorical obsessions. It’s an insulting joke to imply the complex of arts grants in Canada, and the complex of cultural products they support, has anything to do with such a picture. It is also an easy, lazy contrarian stance to take, and it makes occasional good copy in Canada’s litpress when some crank decides to take a swipe at “the system” in the name of pure art.

    Z has complaints about how the grants are designed, as do many of us, Some of us choose to work constructively for change. Others breed extremely high hobby horses and ride them around in the near distance.

    Find me a writer who hasn’t “struggled for her dream” while scoring monetary success through the granting system. Find me one and name her or him. I’ll find and name twenty who continue to struggle after decades of dedication and quality output with only an occasional encouragement of funds to keep grinding away at it.

    As Sally points out, it’s not about being coddled or entitled; it’s about deciding what kind of society you want. If the idea of Canada supporting the production of art offends any working artist’s sense of self-reliance in the face of crappy jobs, those artists have all sorts of options for avoiding the offensive hand-outs.

    Including, yawn, bad-mouthing those who actively participate in the promotion and support of the system.

    BTW, I just came back from watching a practice session for Toronto FC, the new major league soccer team in Canada. I’m writing about them for one of my many day jobs (I actually really like all of my day jobs — suffering is unpleasant). Listening to Mo Johnston, the head coach, talk about the $1 million in salary they have yet to spend on this nearly complete expansion team, thinking about the fact that David Beckham will receive upwards of a quarter of a billion dollars for his play in the league, I can’t help realizing just how completely bush league it is to argue about $20K for any professional endeavour. Yeah, I know, apples and oranges

    Bush apples and bush oranges.