Gerald C. Matics -- Author

A couple of weeks ago Timothy Egan wrote an article in the New York Times after learning that "Joe the Plumber," who became a symbol during the election run-up for the common man, had a book come out this month. Egan is incensed by the fact that a publisher would pay JTP a no-doubt handsome advance while so many more deserving "real" writers can't get their manuscripts read by publisher, let alone published.  He's also upset over Sarah Palin reportedly mulling offers in the millions to put her thoughts onto paper.

Here's my favorite quote from Egan's piece:

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.

He has a point, Egan does.  As does a woman named Lorraine Cregar, who commented on the article in a LinkedIn forum I belong to; Lorraine wants to know whether anyone is really interested in reading JTP's story.

I share Lorraine's question. It's the same thing that keeps me away from "reality" TV: having a real life myself, I feel no urge to peek in on someone else's, famous or obscure.

On the other hand, even as (to use Lorraine's phrase) a struggling novelist at night myself -- I'm less successful than Mr. Egan, so presumably I have more cause to complain -- I still can't get behind him on the bashing, which I think comes across as snobbery and, yes, even sour grapes.

Consider that JTP, having been offered a nice chunk of change he couldn't turn down (would you?), was almost certainly "offered" a lot of help in telling his story, by which I mean of course that the publisher will have made a rather, ah, compelling case for collaboration with a ghostwriter.  Now, given his public speaking so far, I can't say that JTP wouldn't sorely need a ghostwriter to assemble a coherent sentence -- but in fairness I can't say for sure that he would, either, because speaking and writing are cousins, not twins. Maybe it's the romantic in me grasping at straws...but maybe with JTP failing at his chosen profession and similarly lacking success as McCain's political pawn, the stars have aligned to reveal his true talent. (Don't laugh; remember Joseph Conrad, considered by many one of the greatest novelists in the English language, didn't start writing seriously until he was nearly forty; before that, he was a Polish sailor for whom English was his fourth language -- and he only started speaking it fluently in his twenties.)

As for Ms. Palin, I have no love at all for her, but for the sake of fairness, let's put some context around this. She and her boss just got slapped silly at the polls by Barrack Obama and a few hundred million of his friends, it was a hard-fought campaign into which she invested (literally) her soul that nevertheless flopped abysmally, and now in the depths of humiliation she has to face Matt Lauer and put on a brave face for America? Under those circumstances, I think I would sound much like she did -- about as lucid as Jim from "Taxi" -- but it has nothing to do with how she writes, yes?

Having said all that, as far as JTP's book and Palin's (hypothetical but virtually certain) book, I plan to vote the same way I did in November: I'm going to pull someone else's lever.

While drinking my own homemade sour grape wine.