Arts The Writing MacArthurs
It’s so nice when huge piles of money go to writers who are actually awesome.
Graves showed some pretty pictures of work by visual artists getting MacArthurs this year. I have no pretty pictures for you, but I can tell you that George Saunders is the motherfucking bomb—can you still call someone “the bomb”? should I say “the bizzy”? does “motherfucking” help?—and I’m not just saying that because the gods of Bumbershoot conspired to bring him here this year and, even more absurd, to let me be the one to ask questions on stage. He’s a nice, humble guy. Not a motherfucker at all. (Except in the Miles Davis sense.) The “definitive” Saunders fansite does not have this news yet, but here’s an article about Saunders’s reaction in a student newspaper at Syracuse University (where he teaches).
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc got a MacArthur for her nonfiction—she’s the author of Random Family. Here’s a Nightstand about her visiting Chief Sealth High School a couple years ago.
Atul Gawande writes on medical topics (interesting, uncomfortable topics, like how much money he makes as a doctor) for The New Yorker…
Who are all of 2006’s winners, you ask? And what do they look like? And how old they are? Your questions are answered here.
George Saunders won the Macarthur!
It's a tiny thing, a token really, but it does afford me the faintest glimmer of hope that maybe, somewhere, there is something in this world that can be called "justice."