"And this is just one more thing that disgusts me about talent, art, taste in art and the American consumption of art.

We should be ashamed at being such loyal consumers of mass produced shit that crosses our paths in America."

I think I'll lock arms with you and agree to that last part, at least tentatively. (Tentatively because I suspect that some of the mass-produced shit that I quite like would meet with your ire, and I doubly suspect that you've got a bit of it {MPS} lying around here and there as well.)

The question that nags me has less to do with the consumers than with the producers. I have no quibble with media whores and the various flavors of the day. They are just making a living. I say the same thing about the spiders attempting to nest in my garage. Everything that eats has got to find a way to make a living.

But . . .

Where are the writers who write because writing in itself is cool, fun, exhilerating, worth trying, etc., as opposed to those who write because there is money to be made that way?

Isn't writing different from, say, fixing engines, or growing beans? The engine fixers and the bean growers consolidate what once was the labor of a whole bunch of people, leaving some other people free to hit strings on guitars and say something as a way of making a living . . . but nobody says that it has to be a luxury life, right?

Am I foolish to imagine that some of the finest writers around are unsung, unheralded, less than one paycheck from the street? Just people who put one word in front of another each day, on the way to capturing their truth as best they can?

Is it truly a tragedy when our favorite writers fail to capture the attention of the candy-apple-red, always-ready-for stroking, sweet button of the media?

Couldn't such obscurity be a blessing in disguise?

Just sayin'

Herring405