buildings in keeping with your ideal. But you have been weak in your support of others in their desire
for this same attainment.” When it came to apprentices, his son charged, Wright never “stood behind
one and helped him up.” In one case, Wright promised his apprentices a drafting room so they could
work, but it wasn’t until seven years after starting the Taliesin fellowship that he made good on his
promise. At one point, a client admitted that he preferred to hire Wright’s apprentices over Wright
himself, as the apprentices matched his talent but exceeded his conscientiousness when it came to
completing work on schedule and within budget. Wright was enraged, and he forbade his architects
from accepting independent commissions, requiring them to put his name at the top of all their work.
A number of his most talented and experienced apprentices quit, protesting that Wright exploited them
for personal gain and stole credit for their work. “It is amazing,” de St. Aubin observes, “that few of
the hundreds” of Wright’s “apprentices went on to achieve significant, independent careers as
practicing architects.”
George Meyer’s success had the opposite effect on his collaborators: it rippled, cascaded, and
spread to the people around him. Meyer’s colleagues call him a genius, but it’s striking that he has
also been a genius maker. By helping his fellow writers on The Simpsons, George Meyer made them
more effective at their jobs, multiplying their collective effectiveness. “He made me a better writer,
inspiring me to think outside the box,” Don Payne comments. Meyer’s willingness to volunteer for
unpopular tasks, help other people improve their jokes, and work long hours to achieve high
collective standards rubbed off on his colleagues. “He makes everyone try harder,” Jon Vitti told a
Harvard Crimson reporter, who exclaimed that “Meyer’s presence spurs other Simpsons writers to
be funnier,” extolling Meyer’s gift for “inspiring greatness in those around him.”
Meyer left The Simpsons in 2004 and is currently working on his first novel—tentatively titled
Kick Me 1,000,000 Times or I’ll Die—but his influence in the writers’ room persists. Today,
“George’s voice is strongly in the DNA of the show,” says Payne, “and he showed me that you don’t
have to be a jerk to get ahead.” Carolyn Omine adds that “We all picked up a lot of George’s comedic
sense. Even though he’s not here at The Simpsons anymore, we sometimes think in his way.” Years
later, Meyer is still working to lift his colleagues up. Despite winning five Emmy Awards, Tim Long
hadn’t achieved his lifelong dream: he wanted to be published in The New Yorker. In 2010, Long sent
Meyer a draft of a submission. Meyer responded swiftly with incisive feedback. “He just went
through it line by line, and he was incredibly generous. His notes helped me fix things that were
bugging me at the bottom of my soul, but I couldn’t articulate them.” Then, Meyer took his giving one
step further: he reached out to an editor at The New Yorker to help Long get his foot in the door. By
2011, Long’s dream was fulfilled—twice.
By the time Meyer released the second issue of Army Man, he had thirty contributors. They all
wrote jokes for free, and their careers soared along with Meyer’s. At least seven of those
contributors went on to write for The Simpsons. One contributor, Spike Feresten, wrote a single
Simpsons episode in 1995, and became an Emmy-nominated writer and producer on Seinfeld, where
he wrote the famous “Soup Nazi” episode. And the Army Man contributors who didn’t become
Simpsons writers achieved success elsewhere. For example, Bob Odenkirk is a well-known writer
and actor, Roz Chast is a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, and Andy Borowitz became a
bestselling author and creator of “The Borowitz Report,” a satire column and website with millions
of fans. Before that, Borowitz coproduced the hit movie Pleasantville and created The Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air, which in turn launched Will Smith’s career. By inviting them to write for Army Man,
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(Michael S)
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