An Open Letter to the Sherwood Anderson Foundation
Giving money to writers is a good thing. It’s good because to live as a writer (artist) is to live “hand to mouth,” it’s to live a little short most of the time… unless good luck comes trickling down your way, 15,000 dollars, let’s say.
It’s well known that most artists lay buried under other artists who are buried under more. We create a veritable trash heap of music, painting, writing, photography, sculpture, theatre, ad nauseam. It’s also well known that to work one’s way up for a little breath at the top is a pernicious stroke of good luck.
My question to you, Sherwood Anderson Foundation, is how in the name of Henry Miller, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway and Sherwood Anderson himself, do you justify the limitation put on receiving that lightning strike of good luck which is your grant? To me this rule (your only one): “To apply, you should have published at least one book of fiction or a collection of short stories in major literary and/or commercial publications. Self-published stories do not qualify.” — is a slap in Sherwood’s face. I understand there must be credibility and in the world with a trash heap of artists parading as artists under the artists, how do you determine the “real” from the “fake”?
I guess, if your senses for the finery of life are a little dull, I will help you. I have but one line of sound advice: feel it, feel it in your guts. I understand in this world of trash heap artists that feeling is but a mock word, for locked up on all sides are only substitutes. There is that bore-horse of academia, ploughing the barren field of “innovative” and “creative.” For what is a writer today without a mile long, or even a centimeter short, list of degrees, and universities and bachelors and masters and awards here and there? Writers have begun to look like Christmas trees when compared to our great heritage of idyll geniuses, who were stark and bare.
Sherwood Anderson learned to write by the seat of his pants. As did his wide admirers; those who learned from him did so by great endurance, great journeys into the self, into life. I think Sherwood Anderson’s headstone should be the criteria for your smashing award: “Life, Not Death, Is the Great Adventure.” Those who live are in, those who don’t are out.
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