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Aug. 3rd, 2003 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Times had an article a couple of days ago about the Federal Writers' Project, part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. Just as the rest of the WPA used federal money to create jobs for other laborers, the Writers' Project created work for writers--among them Saul Bellow, Studs Terkel, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston. Their best-known project was the American Guide series, a volume for each of the 48 states. I have, and love, Massachusetts and New York.
"The complete set comprises the most comprehensive account of the United States ever got together, and nothing since has even approached it," Steinbeck writes in [Travels with Charley]. "It was compiled during the Depression by the best writers in America, who were, if that is possible, more depressed than any other group while maintaining their inalienable instinct for eating."