Appreciating recession

America stands on the brink of recession. This is good, because I have always known that I would graduate in the middle of a recession. In fact, I've been counting on it. You see, recessions are good for writers, particularly young writers whose parents wish they'd grow up and go to law school. (Hi Mom!) During boom times, being a writer smacks of communism. After all, why else would one refrain from pursuit of the almighty dollar? In times of recession, however, writing seems nearly respectable. After all, it's a living. Hell, it's almost an art form. And though its practitioners may not shave regularly, neither does the Class of 2000 since it got laid off last month. Sometimes, I tell people that I will be working for a paper in Jacksonville this summer. Before the recession began, they processed the whole sentence. I know this because they would say things like "Jacksonville? Where is that?" or "Oh, that sounds like a great job." These are roughly equivalent statements. Now, all they hear is, "I will be working." It no longer matters that I am not headed for a paper like The New York Times or The New York Times. I have their respect. I repeat this to myself sometimes as I explain where Jacksonville is located and how it has a professional football team. The second way in which God rewards writers during recessions is by providing them with things to write about. Writers, you see, thrive upon tension, emotion and chaos; widespread prosperity smooths over all three. Consider the last decade. It has been a time of larger business sections and bad feature stories. A time of self-help books atop the bestseller charts. A time whose literary legacy is a British pre-teen with supernatural powers. Why is this so? Because there are a very limited number of interesting stories that can be written during economic booms. You can explore the existential emptiness in the heart of every wealthy man, and you can catalogue the rapacious excesses of privileged life. Ordinarily, it is also possible to write about the fact that some people are rich and some people are poor, and how that makes the poor people angry. This, however, is not possible at present because all Americans have equal access to credit cards, and therefore those who remain poor must be volunteers of some kind. To make matters worse, the people of the United States also grew tired of hearing about success. There was simply too much of it to warrant memorialization of individual achievements. An IPO CEO had about the same chance of getting on the news in 1999 as a D.C. murder victim in 1989 -- slim to none. Thankfully, things are now changing for the better. Success will soon be rare, unemployment will no longer be voluntary and certain Manhattan neighborhoods will once again be lost to civilization. In response, a select group of writers will spin tales of random acts of kindness and unlikely salvation and the occasional kid whose dreams actually came true. These stories will be printed and filmed and played on the stage, keeping the American people entertained while they await their next chance to participate in a form of demonstrated financial folly called "options trading." A much larger group of writers will simultaneously attempt to chronicle America's inner turmoil and despair. Some of these stories will be printed but none will be filmed. Many, however, will be available for viewing "off-off-Broadway." And then there are the journalists, waiting to chronicle the inevitable weeding of America's corporate garden, the inevitable failure of some social structures and the inevitable resurgence of faith-based alternatives to government (think David Koresh, not John DiIulio). After a few years of recession, these stories, too, will grow old. Journalists will begin to yearn for prosperity and to fear that they are being ignored. And then I say let there be prosperity. In moderation. Another 10 years of happiness might just drive me to law school.

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