{"id":381,"date":"2004-03-23T05:13:44","date_gmt":"2004-03-23T05:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:32","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:32","slug":"pity_and_parody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=381","title":{"rendered":"Pity and Parody"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bunch of people have commented on a terminally silly and self-indulgent article<\/a> in Salon (which used to be good, by the way, and iconoclastic and surprising), so I sat through the lame Flash ad and read it.<\/p>\n

It’s about an author who is unhappy that her books aren’t stacked fifteen deep at airport bookstores (and, by entension, the covers hung on the walls of her place in the Hamptons). Here’s the miserable pittance she earned from writing:<\/p>\n

* 1994 – $150,000
\n* 1997 – She doesn\u2019t say what she got for the celebrity bio she ghostwrote, but friends put these kinds of assignments at about $50,000 – $100,000, so call it $50,000
\n* 1998 – $10,000
\n* 2002 – $80,000That’s $290,000 over 10 years – $29K\/year, plus a book she thinks she could sell for $50,000, bringing her to $340,000 over 10 years or $34K\/year.<\/p>\n

In 2002, the median household income<\/a> in the United States was $42,400. So by writing (assuming the lowest likely sale for the biography and that she sells the current book), she made 80% of the median household income.<\/p>\n

Don’t know about you, but that’s pretty good. She’s doing somethng that she loves, actualizes herself, and making a decent living doing it.<\/p>\n

But from reading the pity party she wrote for herself, you wouldn’t know it.<\/p>\n

Why do I care, you may ask.<\/p>\n

For two reasons, one slight and personal and one large and public.<\/p>\n

Personally, I know and am friends with about ten people who are or aspire to be writers. I’d bitch-slap any one of them that wrote something this sullen and self-pitying, and consider myself a good friend for doing so.<\/p>\n

Publicly, I’ve said all along that we are in a contest that will determine the future of our society. And for me, the kind of corrosive self-pity and anomie that comes with it are a far bigger risk than a bunch of frustrated mullahs with Semtex vests. Because if that attitude wins – anticipating the ‘beautiful destruction’ that is the anodyne to wallowing in negative, hopeless regard of one’s life – the mullahs just have to walk in and they’ll win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bunch of people have commented on a terminally silly and self-indulgent article in Salon (which used to be good, by the way, and iconoclastic and surprising), so I sat through the lame Flash ad and read it. It’s about an author who is unhappy that her books aren’t stacked fifteen deep at airport bookstores […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}