Will you be my patron?
Perhaps you have read about the economic turbulence jostling journalism. For the past 16 years, my patrons have been the shareholders of the
Which is where you come in.
I want a patron, a fabulously wealthy rich man or woman, to subsidize my writing career for the next five years. In olden days, Greek poets produced fulsome odes, called panegyrics, celebrating the virtues of the men and occasionally women who paid their expenses. For example: "Great is thy wisdom and the bounty of thy loins, [YOUR NAME HERE]."
That's my new motto: Panegyrics 'R Us!
Here is what you will get: a small portion of any income I make from writing, plus a half-ownership in any copyrights generated while I am in your employ. In the highly unlikely event that I write a perennial bestseller, e.g., "My Friend Frikka: The True Story of How My Airedale Made Me a Better Person - and Why It Matters," you might even make money on this deal. But remember: You're not in it for the money. I am.
I have other, equally promising ideas "in development": the comic rock opera based on the life of Sylvia Plath, for instance. Not to mention my series of instructional squash videos narrated by Wall Street felons, or "Ship of Fools," my 40,000-word edda in rhymed alexandrine couplets about Henry Ford's famous "peace voyage" to war-worn Europe in 1915.
That's not all. You will also receive a modicum of flattery and bootlicking, as outlined in the "Sycophancy Clause" of our one-page contract. The contract will have a standard, force majeure exit provision, in the event of writer's block, or an untimely expression of interest in your offshore banking arrangements by some kid lawyer at the SEC.
Once a year, I agree to attend a function at your mountain aerie in Vail or Telluride, or at your lakeside "inholding," tucked inside a vast, national park. You can show me off. "Here's my writer," you will say to your plutocrat pals, as if you were boasting of a freshly acquired Bugatti, or a rare ocelot stolen from a Third World nature preserve.
Moreover, I will never make fun of you in print (the "Great Exception" clause), nor of your immediate family, nor of any of your ex-spouses, unless specifically instructed to do so. Forever. If I have already made fun of you, all I can say is, I am sorry, and it won't happen again. If necessary, I will perform a Bart Simpson-like auto-da-fe, writing 100 times on the blackboard: "Jack Welch is a great corporate leader," or "Mortimer Zuckerman is a profound thinker on Middle East policy."
What do I get? I get to write for a living, which is loads of fun. Appearances notwithstanding, I am a hard worker. I'll be happy to provide a list of my accomplishments, e.g., "award-winning columnist," if that kind of bushwa impresses you.
Also in it for me: a yearly salary, paid in advance, with roughly the same benefits and vacation I now receive. Payable in advance is important, as Samuel Johnson discovered when his patron, Lord Chesterfield, stepped forward to claim credit for Johnson's majestic English dictionary in 1775. During the previous seven years, Chesterfield had sent Johnson only 10 pounds! In a famous act of revenge, Johnson defined a patron as "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help."
You are bigger than that, I know.
This will cost you about a million dollars. That is one-third the price of an endowed academic chair, with the added benefit that you can understand what I write. Tax fiddles are welcome, but please, for my sake, keep them legal.
Except for those two or three days when I don a coat and tie and do the writer bit for your friends, you leave me alone. I will briefly entertain your "ideas," to humor you. But please don't get your hopes up. I have plenty of bad ideas of my own.
Can we do business? I hope so.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
