IT’S NOT THE MONEY. Well, it is the money. But even if it weren’t the money, it would be the principle. Not to mention the interest. (Is that an old joke?)
I want a goddamned genius grant.
It has been several weeks now since the MacArthur Foundation announced it was giving tens of thousands of dollars a year, tax free, no strings attached, to a number of Americans it deemed geniuses. I have waited long enough for the apologetic phone call: “Geez, it just hit us. Are we all sitting around here feeling red-faced! Casts the whole program into doubt. Forgot you and Jerry Lee Lewis. It’s this new computer …”
“Let it go,” say friends of mine. No. I am still frosted.
For I hold certain truths to be self-evident, among them that no American should be officially branded a nongenius.
Even if I get a grant next year, who wants to be a genius of the second rank?
I’m surprised the MacArthur Foundation didn’t call me up and say, “Listen, we worked out a generalized assessment for everybody in the country as to how much of a genius each is, and you have to send Robert Penn Warren thirty-five dollars a month.”
Don’t get me wrong. I think the world of Robert Penn Warren. But what does he need to be designated a genius for? He’s got a poem in every goddamned magazine you pick up. Every time you turn around he’s being interviewed about how he reads Homer aloud to his wife every night up in Vermont. I believe the son of a bitch owns a couple of homes. He’s won every goddamned prize in the nation. I think it’s tacky to give him a bunch of money for being a genius.
And what do you think this does to my afflatus? Every time I feel a real flight coming on, I hear the critics: “Blount, though no genius …”
The only one of these certified geniuses I have met is Stephen Jay Gould. He and I taped the Cavett show on the same day. I taped first, as a matter of fact. Met him in the greenroom on the way out. Seemed nice. Wrote a good book, I hear. About pandas, I think.
Pandas.
How much is that worth to the common weal? A genius on pandas.
Can I call him up and say, “Hey, Steve. My panda’s got some kind of inflammation …”? Who’s got a panda? Even rich people don’t have pandas. The President doesn’t have a panda. Give me $30,000 a year tax free, I could buy a panda; but what would I do with one?
Sure, I live in the country. I guess we could keep a panda. The dogs and the kids would probably enjoy it—at least until time came to feed it. But I don’t want a panda. What I want is a little consideration.
What am I now? Just some kind of hack?
All right. I did a beer commercial once. Is a man to be branded for life by one beer commercial? “He doesn’t need a grant; he’s got all that beer money coming in.” Come on, it was just a local Pittsburgh deal. I saw the last dollar and the free six-pack from it years ago. I didn’t lie. I like Iron City beer. I was struggling; I needed the money. And I prefer to work for change from within.
Which is something I could do a lot more effectively with $30,000 a year, tax free, no strings. Are you trying to tell me that Stephen Jay Gould wouldn’t do a beer commercial if somebody offered him one?
Now he wouldn’t, no. Now he doesn’t need it. But if you had offered him one six months ago, I bet he’d be on your home screen right now. On a bar stool, surrounded by pandas. “When these little fellas and I work up a real thirst …” It would probably give everyone who saw it a lift. Some of those beer commercials are the best things on television.
I’ll tell you what will offend me. If some of these grantees start popping up in commercials now. “Nobody feels like a genius first thing in the morning. Not even me—until I’ve had a cup of Maxwell House!”
I hope these guys are being ragged unmercifully in the streets. “Hey, Genius! How’s your ineffable spark hanging!” I won’t be surprised to start seeing, in the Times Science section, references to the new problem of Genius Block.
If you don’t read next year that I got a genius grant, it may well be because I have refused it. On political grounds. It seems to me that the genius of the American system is that money is not linked to intrinsic worth, so that the best people don’t make a whole lot of money. This means that the people who do make a lot of money get to make a lot of money. And the people who don’t make a lot of money get to reflect that the best people probably don’t make a lot of money.
I don’t think it’s healthy for people to have genius and money both. A genius, when his or her spouse comes running in yelling “They’ve come to repossess the kitchen,” is the type of person who says, “I don’t want to hear about it. I’m busy manufacturing a new enzyme in my head.” Or at least a genius is not the type to accept a genius grant graciously. A real genius would be saying, “Thirty thousand dollars a year, huh? What does Rona Barrett make? And who’s going to pick up my Blue Cross?”
Pandas. Can you imagine that? I should have gone into pandas.