Saturday, George Saunders was on “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” and much of the conversation focused on the various odd jobs he had worked as a young man. Host Peter Sagal seemed genuinely bemused by the gigs, one of which was in an abattoir; the unspoken idea being that they were antithetical to the image of a literary man.
And I thought how much the profession of writer has changed over the decades. In the old days, aspiring writers worked all kinds of jobs, and/or joined the army; this gave them material, and put them in touch with everyday people. Today, becoming a writer is like becoming a lawyer, you spend your formative years in a classroom – college followed by graduate school – surrounded by people who are very much like you: from the same background, for the most part, and with the same interests and goals. Saunders himself now teaches in the MFA program at Syracuse University. As a result, many writers have little experience with or knowledge of the working world of the average American. Which partly explains why so many Americans don’t read them.
