Just, No

Helen Dewitt - who I believe should be recognized as a bona fides genius for her book The Last Samurai - said nope to a funder. Specifically, she turned down the $175,000 Windham Campbell prize. That's a lot of money. Especially for a novelist. Especially in an age when a best selling hardback sells 3000 copies.

She said no, citing her limited capacity. Meaning the funder doth demand too much. More of us could learn from her.

This is quite the topic in the literary part of the internet and you can read a lot of feelings and thoughts about it. This is my "philanthropy" take. Times are awful, time is short, funders' demands - generally - make things worse.

Still sick, still dictating occasional blog posts to people who can look at screens for me.

*Dewitt did subsequently agree to receive $175,000 from the conservative Mercatus Center, which did not have any publicity requirements. This has launched another discussion about taking money from Satan and his ilk. If you're still on Twitter/X I'm sure you can read all about that also. I'm not over there anymore, to which I owe the last shred of my sanity.

**If you do read Dewitt's blog post about not accepting the Windham Campbell award you'll get a sense of what life is like in the world today without ready wifi and a device beyond a phone. It's not pretty.