Sarah Palin will get $7 million+ to write a book? To tell us more than we ever, ever wanted to know about herself (hasn't she already?), bore us to tears with how tedious, inarticulate and stupendously clueless she is, and waste many trees?

Joe the Plumber will now be Joe the Writer, also for some shocking and obscene amount of money?

Aah but the literary world was not always so whorish, swinish and unrepentant.

In 1961,...