The thin line between typing and writing has probably been overmapped by those who proclaim themselves Keepers of the Muse.  But writing as a craft remains as hard to pin down as the profession of writing does.  The difficulty of reaching a consensus about what constitutes the craft and what makes a professional professional stems largely from the bell curve of literacy in our society.  It might be more apt to refer to literacies — plural — than literacy, in fact. 

Ours is a largely functionally literate society.  We read and write a lot, but probably more for information than edification.  Even with technology that alleviates the need for the written word — TV, the internet, videophones — we continue to rely heavily on the written word.  Chat and texting are baffling phenomena on some levels.  Why not just talk?  (Of course, multitasking is the answer — my fifteen year-old niece can carry on a conversation and rapid-fire text simultaneously without even having to look at her phone.  I am not convinced that either conversation she is conducting is all that vital or interesting, but the fact that she can carry on two at once, and will soon be doing so behind the wheel of a large automobile, is impressive and terrifying.)

Because almost everyone can type nowadays, who has the right to write is an urgent topic among self-confessed keepers of the flame, who, as Timothy Egan, a published author, shrills in a recent sputtering rant in the New York Times the other day,

work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.

What prompted Egan's strangled call for justice in publishing was far worse than Millie's Book, it was the impending release of Joe the Plumber — Fighting for the American Dream, Joe Wurzelbacher's last gasp.  Egan feels like JTP's book deal is a blow to "real writers" everywhere.  "The idea that someone who stumbled into a sound bite can be published, and charge $24.95 for said words, makes so many real writers think the world is unfair." 

NEWSFLASH:  THE WORLD IS UNFAIR!  Do you not have a mother to constantly remind you of that, Timothy Egan?  Did you not get the memo?

Honestly, I'm not sure what Egan's point is.  Writing and publishing are two very distinct professions with their own demands and their own set of standards and practices.  Most "real writers" know this.  If Egan wants to make the argument that JTP is putting "real writers" out of work, he should remember that Wurzelbacher's book will actually keep a host of ghost writers, editors, and marketers, not to mention event planners and travel agents off the welfare rolls. 

To whinge and whine that publishers owe it to writers Egan deems worthy — writers' writers, if you will — to publish their work is to willfully ignore that the publishing business is not and never has been a meritocracy.  Egan himself is an unrepentant name-dropper, but his rant in the Times adds up to little more than a snob's screed on an ever-struggling business that has always relied on branded authors (whose works over a lifetime vary wildly in quality) and  flash-in-the-pan pop culture phenomena for its very existence. 

JTP's book is simply the latest in a long and venerable tradition of memorabilia from presidential campaigns. I don't think anyone is looking for Joe to be the next Hemingway.  The kitsch value of the book is its main draw.  It falls into a genre of literary curio.  Like Tina Fey's $5 million dollar book about impersonating Sarah Palin.  Fey's book will likely be a little higher up the literary food chain, but she's still no Joan Didion.

The truth is, the struggling publishing business owes struggling writers nothing.  And if these writers are waiting for the world to all the sudden turn fair and publish their finely-crafted examples of nuance and pacing, they wil probably be waiting awhile.  In the meantime, instead of sputtering in impotence about the lack of publishing opportunities, they could take matters into their own hands, like, say, Dave Eggers, who founded McSweeney's, his own publishing house.  For his faults, Eggers seems to understand that If you want the world — or at least your little corner of it — to be fair, you have to make it fair.  Nobody's going to do it for you.

Egan, on the other hand, is clearly preaching to the choir, and I suspect he's actually more interested in earning points with his circle by bashing so easy a target of derision, than in offering any insight into what is, after all, a commonplace in our popular culture .  He manages to squeeze a reference to Obama in there, too, in case you had any doubts about his being with the in-crowd. 

The irony is, Egan's tirade is itself without literary merit  — anyone who can lump SNL's Chris Farley among his literary idols probably shouldn't be getting too snooty about JTP — but as marketing it's not bad.  I mean, any press is good press, right?  And bad press in the Times is probably the best press a publisher of Joe the Plumber could wish for.