![]() "Borchert's vast research and appreciation of this stellar group shows what government nurturing of artists can accomplish in even the worst of times." - Booklist (starred review) "A joy to read, this book blends riveting life narratives of luminous authors put to work by the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project with absorbing portraits, both geographic and social, of Depression America. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book's lessons are urgent and strong. By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation's very identity and future were thrown into question. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, and other future literary stars found encouragement and security on the FWP payroll. We observe notable writers at their day jobs, including Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published Black woman in the country and Richard Wright, who arrived in the FWP's chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory courtesy of the WPA. Scott Borchert's Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the experiences of key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America in words and soon found itself embroiled in the day's most heated arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing-forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself. All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states-along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns-while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities. ![]() ![]() A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression-and employed some of the biggest names in American letters The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious-and utterly unprecedented.
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