WordWacky

Writer’s block is a controversial idea among writers. While some struggle for days, months, years to slay the beast, others mock it as fiction: so much Sasquatch.

You can count James Frey in that latter camp, and an off-the-cuff, quotable comment he made at a reading has injured the feelings of — not writers, but bankers.

Frey is easy to pick on — even Oprah, the guardian angel of modern American women, has had her turn. And unlike Oprah, the field of banking has never been known to champion the underdog, so it’s not surprising that they’d resurrect his past “mistakes” [Editor's note: I believe these same mistakes to be present in all memoirs, to a greater or lesser degree.] and call him a “Fake Writer.” A fake writer he is not.

From Dealbreaker:

At a reading last night, when asked by an audience member if he ever found it difficult to come up with material, he responded, “Writer’s block is for chumps. To me this is a job, like being a banker, or a teacher. You never hear of banker’s block.”

Well, it turned out that some bankers had heard of banker’s block. Said one particularly eloquent banker:

“I’d like to see how long it would take Frey to try and write a public filing that describes the ass-rape of Bear Stearns without using profanity. Do you have any idea how long I sat there trying to come up with an acceptable alternative? At first I thought, okay, how about the ‘non-consensual fucking of Bear Stearns,” but that didn’t work. Then I tried “backdoor surprise,” but that didn’t cut it either. I literally sat there for hours with nothing but that infernal cursor staring me in the face before deciding to go with “involuntary and immediate liquidity injection requirement.” Late at night, I lie awake and see visions of that cursor. Taunting. Mocking. Making a fool of me. So don’t you dare tell me there’s no writer’s block in banking.”

Is the point that in all pursuits people have lackluster days, days where nothing’s flowing, no progress is made? Or that some people, whatever their pursuit, are chumps, staring at the mocking cursor?

Or maybe there’s more in common between writing and banking than we previously realized, Mr. Frey. Whaddya say? Career switch?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 6:30 am and is filed under quotes, writers, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.