Brick

Copy­right 2009 Ben S. Pollock

A news­magazine com­men­tary from a cou­ple of weeks ago stopped me cold. I still think about it, in a sim­i­lar way a comic panel from last year comes up, which has put me off Outback’s Bloomin’ Onions. These are like cloy­ing old songs that once heard rever­ber­ate for days within the skull.

Speak­ing of skulls, let’s dis­cuss block­heads, as con­sid­ered by the ven­er­a­ble Samuel Johnson:

No man but a block­head ever wrote, except for money.”

For a long time I fully agreed, only that it didn’t yet apply to me, mak­ing me a block­head, a fool. Brick obvi­ously has no money behind it. Or in front, either. I’ve been paid for writ­ing only a few times per cen­tury. Oh, there’s been indi­rect com­pen­sa­tion, writ­ing a col­umn a week while edit­ing the other 35–39 hours. For putting up with such an arrange­ment, Dr. John­son would kick peo­ple like me out of the cof­fee house. I won­der if that’s how pubs came to flour­ish, when the Eng­lish cof­fee houses emp­tied for want of com­pen­sated scribes.

Not­ing some­one named Fran­cis Wilkin­son agrees with Dr. John­son does not raise the for­mer to the lat­ter. Ear­lier in March he wrote in The Week mag­a­zine more than 800 words what the good doc­tor accom­plished in 10. I see Wilkinson’s point, and even though it is wrong, it still makes me angry.

Rather than quote and quote the essay, why don’t you click to it and see for your­self. In a hurry? Allow me: Wilkin­son goes into a fair amount of detail about how writ­ers in recent decades invari­ably were paid, though rarely much. Now, how­ever, there’s even less pay, rel­a­tive to infla­tion but more so rel­a­tive to Inter­net oppor­tu­ni­ties. He believes that only writ­ers whose money comes from else­where will be able to afford to pro­duce and the soci­ety will lose needed voices. Wilkin­son has one per­sonal exam­ple: His expe­ri­ence edit­ing at the online Huff­in­g­ton Post. It pays writ­ers noth­ing yet has been over­run with sub­mis­sions since its beginning.

Wilkin­son pro­fesses not to under­stand. Yet his credit line indi­cates he is his news magazine’s exec­u­tive edi­tor. His col­umn is a side­line, prov­ing his point, that the world of prose will nar­row to those who can afford to. Only he avoids the argu­ment. “HuffPo” attracts writ­ers who find sat­is­fac­tion out­side of remu­ner­a­tion. Most writ­ers do.

Even in Johnson’s time, 1709–1784, few writ­ers wrote for money and the rest were not block­heads. Those Brits who were lit­er­ate did not have phones, pod­casts or tele­vi­sion. If they weren’t face-to-face, they wrote — let­ters. If you couldn’t write, you’d hire some­one to take your dictation.

Pag­ing Cyrano de Berg­erac, white cour­tesy tele­phone. Pag­ing Cyrano …”

For cen­turies, peo­ple have writ­ten to com­mu­ni­cate. They wrote in order to be writ­ten back to. They wrote in order to be heard or, rather, to be read. Money would be nice, but it’s not the only econ­omy. Here are two ter­rific exam­ples, John and Abi­gail Adams; you may know them from their TV show, now on DVD.

There’s a prime rea­son why peo­ple make words, crafts or art besides get­ting green­backs. I’m only now learn­ing about this so can’t explain it well. Its com­mon name is the Gift Econ­omy. It’s not some form of communism/socialism/terrorism/anarchism out to defeat cap­i­tal­ism while boost­ing Rush Limbaugh’s rat­ings to oppose. Giv­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal, but pre­ci­sion in the exchange often deval­ues it. For young geeks, file shar­ing is a Gift Econ­omy exchange, not a Mar­ket Econ­omy one. Wilkin­son only acknowl­edges the Mar­ket (or Barter) Econ­omy. Gift Econ­omy is what soci­ol­o­gists and philoso­phers, and law school heroes and surely econ­o­mists (though I haven’t read them yet) have termed this, awk­ward for the ambi­gu­ity of “gift,” and cre­ated mod­els and his­to­ries for it.

Most of law pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig’s books start from the premise of the Gift Econ­omy. Lessig helped found Cre­ative Com­mons, to pro­tect those intel­lec­tual rights worth both­er­ing about. Lewis Hyde explores the world of artists and art lovers in his book The Gift, and the more recent Com­mon as Air, where trade can be explained only par­tially by exchang­ing money for a pic­ture to hang or a book to read.

The Gift Econ­omy can help explain why cap­ping the acces­si­bil­ity of free news on the Inter­net will prove to be impos­si­ble. The Gift Econ­omy is not a com­peti­tor to cap­i­tal­ism as com­mu­nism is com­monly thought to be. Gift and Mar­ket are com­ple­men­tary. Each fills dif­fer­ent needs of soci­ety, and a healthy soci­ety allows a flow­ing equi­lib­rium between both of them.

The Mar­ket Econ­omy and Wilkin­son find an over­sup­ply of writ­ers. The Gift Econ­omy does not tab­u­late them. Most writ­ing these days more closely resem­bles let­ters than any­thing else.

The Gift Econ­omy even applies to market-successful artists. It does not apply only to art no one buys or capital-L lit­er­a­ture few read. Writ­ing to for­mula as a hack is no gift. Stephen King is wildly suc­cess­ful and envi­ably pro­lific, yet in read­ing any of his works the kick this artist gets from spin­ning tales is as obvi­ous as the nose on Cyrano’s face.

Update to Johnson:

No one but a hack ever wrote, except for money.”

Peo­ple like us enjoy cre­at­ing — words, wood­carv­ing, fish­ing lures — and it’s a reverse–lagniappe if some­one actu­ally takes a look. As I mature, it grows more attractive.

This Good Depres­sion (the Great Depres­sion was suf­fered by the Great­est Gen­er­a­tion, and at best we’re just a Good Gen­er­a­tion) accel­er­ates such con­tem­pla­tion. All that I pre­vi­ously under­stood was based on John­son, that a lack of pay proves futil­ity. It does not. No that I won’t accept lucre, but my world has got­ten a lot sim­pler since I quit schem­ing to write for money.

I’m not blocked anymore.