Do Writers Need to Suffer to be Productive? Crain's Thinks So.

Posted on January 25, 2005

Crain's Chicago Business presents an expose about about the usefulness of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants. Each year, the Foundation gives out $500,000 to one or more authors in the hopes that freedom from money worries will allow spur the writers on to even greater achievements. Crain's did their own study and concluded that "most of the 31 writers chosen since 1981 as MacArthur Fellows had already hit their artistic peak. That conclusion is supported by the 14 major awards - either a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award or PEN/Faulkner prize - and 37 minor awards the authors received before getting their MacArthur money."

Crain's further concluded that 88% of the "genius" grant recipients wrote better work and were more productive before they got the money, saying "it would reinforce romantic notions that great art requires personal sacrifice to suggest that, half-a-million dollars in hand, writers get lazy." Is the correct conclusion that writers need to suffer in order to turn out great work? Or was Crain's methodology flawed by the age of the participants and the subjectivity of judging a writer's work? Or is the Foundation just looking for an excuse to change its program? We predict that younger writers will start winning MacArthur Foundation grants in the future.