There’s something wonderfully cheesy about the MacArthur Fellows Program, which since 1981 has been dropping a small fortune and the mantle of genius on its grant recipients. The program is pretty genius itself, with a mystique anchored in that moment when the phone rings and the gift is announced, “out of the blue–$500,000–no strings,” as the foundation headlined its press release this year. I’m reminded of The Millionaire, a fictional 1950s TV series in which a super-rich recluse, John Beresford Tipton, amused himself by conferring sudden wealth on randomly selected ordinary folk and observing the consequences. In that exquisite moment when the knock came, the unsuspecting recipients would open the door to find Tipton’s emissary, a cashier’s check for a million dollars in hand.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Unlike Tipton’s gifts, the MacArthurs are not given randomly. Part of the mystique is the corps of hundreds of anonymous nominators: like Big Brother, they’re out there watching, listening, and developing lists that, in a famously secretive process, are scrutinized, debated, and winnowed to the 20 to 25 fellows selected annually. Chosen for their “creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future,” they can be working at anything, according to the foundation: “The imagination of MacArthur Fellows knows neither boundaries nor the constraints of age, place and field.” But observers like Slate’s David Plotz have tracked some patterns: liberals, academics with eccentric interests or theories, and urban coast dwellers, for example, have collected an outsize share of the loot. Word is that the nominators can include a few former winners, and Dybek hangs out with some of them, including Aleksandar Hemon, Edward Hirsch, and poet laureate Charles Simic.
For the last two years, Dybek’s been Northwestern University’s first “distinguished writer in residence,” a five-year appointment. But when he entered Loyola University in 1960 he was placed in remedial English. “My test scores were so low after four years at Saint Rita,” he says. “I was a terrible, terrible student. I loved writing, but I couldn’t spell.” He graduated from Loyola with “about a 2.1 average” and toiled as a Cook County social worker long enough to lose his illusions about what could be accomplished in that job. Loyola professor Tom Gorman prodded him to return for a master’s in English; after getting it, he taught for two years in the Virgin Islands, then attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. From 1974 to 2006 he was an English professor at Western Michigan University. He’s published two books of poetry and three of fiction: Childhood and Other Neighborhoods (1980), The Coast of Chicago (1990), and I Sailed With Magellan (2003).
