Autumn XXI. Young writers

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn XX. Wine and war

Is there, at this moment, any boy of twenty, fairly educated, but without means, without help, with nothing but the glow in his brain and steadfast courage in his heart, who sits in a London garret, and writes for dear life? There must be, I suppose; yet all that I have read and heard of late years about young writers, shows them in a very different aspect. No garretteers, these novelists and journalists awaiting their promotion. They eat -- and entertain their critics -- at fashionable restaurants; they are seen in expensive seats at the theatre; they inhabit handsome flats -- photographed for an illustrated paper on the first excuse... Many biographical sketches have I read, during the last decade, making personal introduction of young Mr. This or young Miss That, whose book was -- as the sweet language of the day will have it -- "booming"; but never one in which there was a hint of stern struggle, of the pinched stomach and frozen fingers. I surmise that the path of "literature" is being made too easy... writing has come to be recognized as a profession, almost as cut-and-dried as church or law; a lad may go into it with full parental approval, with ready avuncular support... Starvation, it is true, does not necessarily produce fine literature; but one feels uneasy about these carpet-authors. To the two or three who have a measure of conscience and vision, I could wish, as the best thing, some calamity which would leave them friendless in the streets. They would perish, perhaps. But set that possibility against the all but certainty of their present prospect -- fatty degeneration of the soul; and is it not acceptable?

...It happened that, on one... evening [30 years earlier], I was by the river at Chelsea, with nothing to do except to feel that I was hungry, and to reflect that, before morning, I should be hungrier still. I loitered upon Battersea Bridge -- the old picturesque wooden bridge, and there the western sky took hold upon me... I sat down, and wrote a description of what I had seen, and straightway sent it to an evening newspaper, which, to my astonishment, published the thing next day -- 'On Battersea Bridge.' How proud I was of that little bit of writing!... I wrote it because I enjoyed doing so, quite as much as because I was hungry; and the couple of guineas it brought me had as pleasant a ring as any money I ever earned.

Alpha.

I confess that I can identify with the sour grapes Ryecroft expresses here. When I was a computer programmer there were some startups here in San Francisco, but most of the established companies were still in Silicon Valley. I spent an inordinate amount of time commuting down there, mostly by train. And, while the pay and perks were certainly much better than I was used to, they were not close to what you would find today.

Today a significant number of the people in the business -- and even of the most dynamic businesses -- are determined to be here in The City. From where I lived in the early 1990’s I could today walk across the street to work at Twitter, for example. The truth is that I would not be qualified for these apparently similar jobs. I was only in demand because it was a new industry and I was self-taught. Frequently I see coding that would have embarrassed me to have published, but that’s always the case.

As I was reading Ryecroft, I remembered similar stories of fortunate young literary pupa my friend K--- reported to me from the end of the 20th century with, I seem to remember, a similar lack of bonhomie. Today I suspect the young literary elite benefit more from exclusive schools than from fashionable restaurants; and more from literary prizes than from handsome flats.

While there is really no evidence to support this supposition, I wonder if Ryecroft here isn’t also sensitive to the Greshamization of literature (definition next post, sorry), which was just getting started toward the end of the 19th century as literacy rates rose. (And isn’t it wonderful that there is a popular author named John Grisham who so aptly exemplifies the meaning of that term borrowed from economics.) With the development of a mass audience for “literature” the economic stakes started to rise and the market started to change. Literature was now a career a good, middle-class child might unashamedly seek simply because it might well be profitable. And this was before movie rights and author tours and Oprah.

Literature was becoming trade, pure and simple, where it had previously been a special case intellectual activity that, of necessity, included aspects similar to trade in general. The Marbled Pages in early editions of Tristram Shandy are actually a good example of this trend. In Laurence Sterne’s day artists (or artisans) could produce unique works for the very limited book audience of the day, while in the 20th century, Mephistophelian machines would mass produce -- print, bind, dust jacket, and package -- the bestsellers intended for a very different audience.

Next: Autumn XX. Older writers.