Support the Troops’ Assault on . . . Parnassus
Support the Troops’ Assault on . . . Parnassus - So I’m researching a paper on the NEA, which is how I learned of its latest high-profile project, Operation Homecoming. In Chair Dana Gioia’s words:
In coordination with all four branches of the Armed Forces and the Department of Defense, the Arts Endowment is sponsoring writing workshops for returning troops and their families at military installations from Alaska to Florida, New York to California, and numerous sites in between. The workshops also will be held at overseas bases. Taught by some of America’s most distinguished novelists, poets, historians, and journalists, these workshops will provide service men and women with the opportunity to write about their wartime experiences in a variety of forms - from fiction, verse, and letters to essay, memoir, and personal journal. The visiting writers, many of whom are war veterans themselves, will help the troops share their stories with current and future generations.
Reactions:
1) Dana Gioia is a genius at coming up with budget items Republican congressmen would have a hard time objecting to. I mean, seriously, I am in awe. I thought the Shakespeare in America program was savvy, but the cunning of Operation Homecoming leaves me in awe.
2) On one level, Operation Homecoming strikes me as the least indefensible use of the Endowment’s money I’ve yet heard. It’s just a budgeted employment benefit for a particular class of federal employees, and the class that’s performing what even most libertarians agree is a legitimate function of the state. I don’t get bent out of shape when someone builds a bowling alley on a military base, so why should if fuss me if someone holds a writer’s workshop?
But then, while the bowling alleys probably offer lessons, I doubt that they bring in the top bowlers on the pro tour to do the teaching. If Operation Homecoming were just a matter of “let’s help returning veterans who want to write,” the base command could hire local writers to come in for what would likely be less than a workshop superstar like Richard Bausch probably gets. It wouldn’t make nearly the splash that Operation Homecoming aims to make, though. Operation Homecoming mixes what are undoubtedly good intentions with an attempt to make the NEA’s budget War-onTerror-sacred.
Do order the free CD, though, even though it means hearing the Sullivan Ballou letter one more time. It’s narrated by Gioia, who has a wonderful speaking voice; it features reflections by Richard Wilbur and Louis Simpson; and, hey, you’ve already paid for it.
(Postsript: I forego snarky “previous generations of American veterans produced great literature without the NEA’s help,” because while that is strictly true, and completely true for Wars through 1918, you can make a case that many of the World War II generation writers benefitted materially from the GI Bill, and probably many Vietnam-era writers availed themselves of postwar federal education aid of one sort or another. It’s not that federal programs like the NEA never do any good. Rather, often the good they do is something the government has no business doing. The children of our returning veterans would love ponies. Doesn’t mean the government should provide them, even if a few of the kids grew up to be great jockeys or breeders and enriched the lives of racing fans across the country.)
