The Plot Curdles

By JULIAN GOUGH

Statement by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. following Congress's passage of today's rescue package:

As we all know, lax writing practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible writing and irresponsible reading. This simply put too many families into books they could not finish. We are seeing the impact on readers and neighborhoods, with five million Americans now behind on their reading. Some are just walking away from novels they should never have been reading in the first place. What began as a subprime reading problem has spread to other, less-risky readers and contributed to excess inventories.

These troubled novels are now parked, or frozen, on the shelves of libraries, bookstores and other reading institutions, preventing these institutions from financing readable novels. The normal buying and selling of nearly all types of literature has become challenged.

The role of the ratings agencies cannot be overlooked in creating this crisis. The Pulitzer, Booker and National Book Foundation committees continued to award top ratings to these novels, even as unread copies piled up all over America.

These unreadable novels are clogging up our literary system, and undermining the strength of our otherwise sound literary institutions. As a result, Americans' personal libraries are threatened, and the ability of readers to borrow, and of libraries to lend, has been disrupted.

To restore confidence in our book markets and our literary institutions, we must address the underlying problem —loss of confidence in our nation's writers. That collapse in confidence is choking the flow of ideas that is so vitally important to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, ideas flow to novelists and poets who create novels and poems, ensuring an uninterrupted flow of literature to households and businesses. But stresses in our leading writers have led to the current severe and systemic writer's block that threatens to undermine access to books for working Americans.

This bill contains a broad set of tools that can be deployed to strengthen writers, large and small, that serve businesses and families. Our writers are varied — from large novelists headquartered in New York, to regional novelists that serve multistate areas, to community poets and short story writers that are vital to the lives of our citizens and their towns and communities. The challenges our writers face are just as varied — from full-scale writer's block, to restructuring failed novels, to simply facing a crisis of confidence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/weekinreview/04gough.html?_r=1