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Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America
Maybe someday
49
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
18/100Critics
80/100Scholars
Author:
Scott Borchert
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
June 15, 2021
The Federal Writers' Project was 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. Scott Borchert's Republic of Detours tells the story of this 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.
What The Reviewers Say
... impressive.
... engaging.
Borchert, through a series of biographical chapters on some of the best-known authors, engrossingly shows how the New Deal recognized art as labor and why that model should be reinvigorated today.
... a dynamic and discriminating cultural history that speaks to both readers who know something about the project and those who don't. Like the American Guides these Depression-era writers worked on, Borchert's book teems with colorful characters, scenic byways and telling anecdotes; his own writing style is full of 'verve' — the much prized quality that so many of the guides themselves possessed.
