When I was a kid, I remember being fascinated by the little ads I saw in the backs of magazines for the Famous Writers School and the Famous Artists School. As I recall, the Famous Artists School come-on involved a drawing of a Bambi-like fawn, and the copy teased, "If you can draw this . . ."

The Famous Writers' School even ran broadcast ads, starring Rod Serling, the creator of my beloved Twilight Zone.

When I was eleven or so, I sent away for their writing aptitude test, and took it. They concluded I was promising enough that they'd allow me to send them a lot of money to take their course.

I didn't sign up, and not just because I didn't have the cash. Even as a kid in Nebraska, I found the whole operation pathetic. Pathetic for writers of stature like Rod Serling to be whoring themselves like this. And pathetic for hopeful would-be authors to imagine that they'd be taught by famous writers through a home-study correspondence course, or that the talent and success of Famous Writers would somehow just . . . rub off.

In retrospect, those home study courses seem quaint.

These days, surely, respected cultural figures making millions of dollars a year wouldn't deign to lend their prestige to such a disingenuous enterprise.

And civilians in this day and age must be too clued-in and wised-up to invest their hopes in such schemes. But like a Twilight Zone episode where some strange little corner of life keeps repeating itself, I was astonished to discover that it's all happening again.

The biggest record company in the America, Universal Music Group, has teamed up with Penguin Putnam, one of the biggest book publishers, to create something called Inside Sessions. On the famous writers' side, shockingly, they've managed to recruit non-fiction authors like David McCullough, Scott Berg, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and novelists like Melissa Banks, Nick Hornby, Sue Grafton and Kurt Vonnegut.

The people who sign up for the course will not have any contact whatsoever with those writers, of course. They are merely famous names. Instead, for their $69.95 the students get to read ten online articles about the writing and publishing process, and have the right to submit their writing to a "professional editor with over 20 years of senior editorial and executive experience at major publishing houses" with a "chance to get their work published."

And if you pay a little more, you get "written feedback" about your writing from the professional editor who pulled this miserable duty.

In other words, $69.95 to buy the equivalent of a short book -- and an extra $40.00 to get a customized rejection letter.

For aspiring musicians, the bait is the figurehead involvement of Sheryl Crow, Fred Durst, Nelly, Sir George Martin, Russell Simmons, Enrique Iglesias and Sting. It'll cost you at least $60 to have a Universal Music Group record executive listen to your demo tape and send you written feedback -- presumably, explaining why your music isn't yet great and why they' won't be signing you up as an artist anytime soon.

I guess this is an improvement over the Famous Writer's School and Famous Artist's School of my childhood. At least in this incarnation, it's actual publishing and record company employees who read and listen to the work -- people who do, theoretically, have the power to pluck out unknown geniuses and undiscovered stars.

And that is the dream these two giant multinational corporations are selling to desperately hopeful amateurs, at $60 and $110 a pop.

In the 19th century, Marx and Engels wrote that history occurs first as tragedy, and then a second time as farce. I guess that principle has been modified in American pop culture: nowadays when history repeats itself, it's a faintly tragic farce the first time and then a slicker, bigger, faintly tragic farce the second time.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.

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