Author: Mangione, Jerre

Publication Year: 1971

Media Type: Book

Summary:

For eight turbulent years, the New Deal kept literally thousands of writers from starvation in one of the most massive cultural aid programs the government has ever devised, the Federal Writers' Project. [This book] is the tempestuous chronicle of this chapter in American sociopolitical history. Here is a story of poets and playwrights, geniuses and hacks, drunks and informers, read and reactionaries, writers such as Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren, Richard Wright, Conrad Aiken, Ralph Ellison, earning more than $100 a month, yet bringing forth astonishingly authentic, enduring literature.

Abstract:

For eight turbulent years, the New Deal kept literally thousands of writers from starvation in one of the most massive cultural aid programs the government has ever devised, the Federal Writers' Project. [This book] is the tempestuous chronicle of this chapter in American sociopolitical history. Here is a story of poets and playwrights, geniuses and hacks, drunks and informers, read and reactionaries, writers such as Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren, Richard Wright, Conrad Aiken, Ralph Ellison, earning more than $100 a month, yet bringing forth astonishingly authentic, enduring literature. (Book jacket). In addition, the author writes about various state projects.

CONTENTS
  1. The death of a dream.
  2. In the beginning.
  3. A time of overlapping crises.
  4. Writers and would-be writers.
  5. Manhattan hotbed.
  6. The dream and the action.
  7. Varieties of American stuff.
  8. Congress sees red.
  9. The last years.
10. The legacy.

Selected publications of the WPA federal writers project and the writers program by
Arthur Scarf.
Sources consulted [bibliography].
Illustrations.
Credits.
Index.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Funding