Commonplace 168 George & Being An 'Author By Profession' PART ONE.
Most of us have heard of Benjamin Disraeli, two-time
British prime minister (Feb-Dec 1868, and 1874-80), a
member of the Conservatives, and man beloved platonically, if somewhat
flirtily, by Queen Victoria (read more about that here click).
He had a second career as a novelist but has rather fallen out of fashion and
few read his work nowadays. Less well known is his father, Isaac D'Israeli
(1766-1848), an historian and man of many literary endeavours, and someone
who deserves to be read any time by everyone interested in Literature.
One of his many works is a discourse on the travails of being a writer, a sort of prototype New Grub Street. 'The Calamities of Authors: including some inquiries respecting their moral and literary characters' (published in two parts, in 1812-3 and available free on Google Play) is a commentary on the job of being a writer, composed in an age when the business of writing was being carved up into two factions - those who wrote from innate necessity, demonstrating artistic expression; and those who used their literacy skills as a means of making a living: New Grub Street's Edwin Reardon versus Jasper Milvain, if you will. In this, rather than being in on the scrum of a living debate, George was harking back to previous battles fought by others and adding his two penn'orth from the sidelines, long after the event broke off from boredom. I blame his reading habits - trawling though books looking for ideas for reworking into others... recycling, but not stealing. George never did that, did he? Not plagiarism. Definitely not plagiarism. That would be very bad, if he ever did that. Which he never did. Ever.
Making money from writing was acceptable in Isaac D'Israeli's day, but the elite amongst writers considered themselves to be above such crass vulgarity as to be caught doing it exclusively for the dosh - this elite usually comprised those with enough independent wealth to support themselves. We know one of George's many inner struggles was bringing congruence to the writing for pay/writing for Art dissonance. Though he would have hated to admit it, he really was too lazy to diversify or learn another skills-set; writing, like walking, is a bit of a soft option when it comes to earning a living (note to athletes: it's just running, jumping, swimming, playing with your balls... and you get knighthoods for it???), but being an author was a bit of an odd choice for a man who never found it easy to write anything (possibly with the exception of letters). Surely if you are a natural born writer, you don't have to birth every book with maximum mental bloodshed, each book a Giger alien exploding from you brain?? However, he cloaked it all in arty-farty camouflage, and preferred to pedal the old myth that Art has to be wrenched from the inner psychological depths if it is to have validity and power and beauty. Hmmm. Not sure Picasso would have agreed.
'Selling out' was a phrase much used in the hippy days of the 1960s, often by those who preferred to paddle their own canoes rather than work in an office or factory. When Bob Dylan went electric in 1966 (click), you would not believe the rage that caused in some reactionary British fans who accused him of 'selling out' and being a 'Judas' - to our never-ending shame, and all just for his transition from acoustic to electric for part of the gig!!! As history tells us, we could not have had 'Like a Rolling Stone', the best 'pop' song ever (click) without him incorporating electric - and he never abandoned acoustic, did he? (Another Artist mistakenly tarred with the selling out brush is Andy Warhol, usually by people who don't know their Art or their Artists)
The Divine Oscar Wilde once said:
Rather laughingly, and a little disingenuously, George mentioned not wanting to appeal to a wide audience - say, the shop workers who read their Mudie's borrowed volumes on t'omnibus to and from work - because only an elite minority could appreciate his Art. He turned down many journalistic commissions because he didn't want to be caught 'selling out' his 'genius', which just goes to show how out of touch with the real world he could be. But, if you are trying to promote elitism as your artistic USP, you have to keep yourself aloof from the crowd. Part of George's probably unconscious game plan was to be unavailable socially and appear mysterious which is always catnip to an appreciative audience. Fans of Harper Lee, Thomas Pynchon, J D Salinger and to some degree Northampton's 'Watchman' writer, Alan Moore, all want to see their favourite writers out and about more. Well, maybe not Harper Lee and J D Salinger quite so much these days, being as how they are both dead.
When George and HG Wells first got together in that now famous Omar Khayyam dinner (20th November 1896, two days short of George's 39th birthday), HG confessed he felt he had lived a bit of the same life as Edwin Reardon - by having a wife he called Amy and living in a dump of a flat flat in Mornington Terrace in Camden Town (now renamed Mornington Terrace). George would have smiled to himself and thought 'Ah, yes, but have you starved?' as he was wont to do when younger, fitter (in the Darwinian sense), more versatile writers loomed into view. He might also have said, in his superior way, that, Wells being a non-aristocrat at heart (and in his waters, his bones, and every cell of his being) and only the child of servants, starving in a garret wouldn't have affected him as much as it would someone who regarded themselves to be an aristocrat. It's the 'Princess and the Pea' click argument he often thought held water. But it doesn't.
For George, making money from writing was akin to writing advertising copy. He found advertising hoardings an affront to his tender sensibilities - the preoccupation with piles, constipation, all manner of sickness and fatal diseases, the brash colours, the insistent 'in your face-ness' of them was in opposition to his love of harmony and order. His one-time travelling companion, Herr Plitt, who went to Paris with him, brought out some of the best of George's humour - Plitt collected adverts and preferred these to the Artworks in the Louvre. Obviously, Plitt was a man of the future, and would have been happy to find himself in the twentieth century in ways George never would.
This snobbery about all things aesthetic found its way into his fiction - both writing for children (the domain of educated, under-used women) and writing or drawing for pay (many characters, notably Jasper Milvain of NGS and those implicated souls of In The Year of Jubilee). He equated this sort of carry on as one of the worst traits anyone could be guilty of: Philistinism, a term coined by Matthew Arnold to describe anyone not in love with high-brow culture. We now (rightly IMO) see these fuddy-duddy coves as reactionary and pretentious but social markers such as the one that makes you think you know what Art is meant to do or be, served in George's day to separate the wheat from the chavs haha. Much as it does, today.
 |
| Isaac D'Israeli |
One of his many works is a discourse on the travails of being a writer, a sort of prototype New Grub Street. 'The Calamities of Authors: including some inquiries respecting their moral and literary characters' (published in two parts, in 1812-3 and available free on Google Play) is a commentary on the job of being a writer, composed in an age when the business of writing was being carved up into two factions - those who wrote from innate necessity, demonstrating artistic expression; and those who used their literacy skills as a means of making a living: New Grub Street's Edwin Reardon versus Jasper Milvain, if you will. In this, rather than being in on the scrum of a living debate, George was harking back to previous battles fought by others and adding his two penn'orth from the sidelines, long after the event broke off from boredom. I blame his reading habits - trawling though books looking for ideas for reworking into others... recycling, but not stealing. George never did that, did he? Not plagiarism. Definitely not plagiarism. That would be very bad, if he ever did that. Which he never did. Ever.
Making money from writing was acceptable in Isaac D'Israeli's day, but the elite amongst writers considered themselves to be above such crass vulgarity as to be caught doing it exclusively for the dosh - this elite usually comprised those with enough independent wealth to support themselves. We know one of George's many inner struggles was bringing congruence to the writing for pay/writing for Art dissonance. Though he would have hated to admit it, he really was too lazy to diversify or learn another skills-set; writing, like walking, is a bit of a soft option when it comes to earning a living (note to athletes: it's just running, jumping, swimming, playing with your balls... and you get knighthoods for it???), but being an author was a bit of an odd choice for a man who never found it easy to write anything (possibly with the exception of letters). Surely if you are a natural born writer, you don't have to birth every book with maximum mental bloodshed, each book a Giger alien exploding from you brain?? However, he cloaked it all in arty-farty camouflage, and preferred to pedal the old myth that Art has to be wrenched from the inner psychological depths if it is to have validity and power and beauty. Hmmm. Not sure Picasso would have agreed.
 |
| The Muse of Writer's Block? HR Giger's original design for the 1979 Ridley Scott film 'Alien'. |
It is to be
regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but
to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish.
Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion
must be exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for him,
will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others. And by work I
simply mean activity of any kind.
Rather laughingly, and a little disingenuously, George mentioned not wanting to appeal to a wide audience - say, the shop workers who read their Mudie's borrowed volumes on t'omnibus to and from work - because only an elite minority could appreciate his Art. He turned down many journalistic commissions because he didn't want to be caught 'selling out' his 'genius', which just goes to show how out of touch with the real world he could be. But, if you are trying to promote elitism as your artistic USP, you have to keep yourself aloof from the crowd. Part of George's probably unconscious game plan was to be unavailable socially and appear mysterious which is always catnip to an appreciative audience. Fans of Harper Lee, Thomas Pynchon, J D Salinger and to some degree Northampton's 'Watchman' writer, Alan Moore, all want to see their favourite writers out and about more. Well, maybe not Harper Lee and J D Salinger quite so much these days, being as how they are both dead.
When George and HG Wells first got together in that now famous Omar Khayyam dinner (20th November 1896, two days short of George's 39th birthday), HG confessed he felt he had lived a bit of the same life as Edwin Reardon - by having a wife he called Amy and living in a dump of a flat flat in Mornington Terrace in Camden Town (now renamed Mornington Terrace). George would have smiled to himself and thought 'Ah, yes, but have you starved?' as he was wont to do when younger, fitter (in the Darwinian sense), more versatile writers loomed into view. He might also have said, in his superior way, that, Wells being a non-aristocrat at heart (and in his waters, his bones, and every cell of his being) and only the child of servants, starving in a garret wouldn't have affected him as much as it would someone who regarded themselves to be an aristocrat. It's the 'Princess and the Pea' click argument he often thought held water. But it doesn't.
 |
| HG Wells lived in this blue house in 1894, number 12. |
This snobbery about all things aesthetic found its way into his fiction - both writing for children (the domain of educated, under-used women) and writing or drawing for pay (many characters, notably Jasper Milvain of NGS and those implicated souls of In The Year of Jubilee). He equated this sort of carry on as one of the worst traits anyone could be guilty of: Philistinism, a term coined by Matthew Arnold to describe anyone not in love with high-brow culture. We now (rightly IMO) see these fuddy-duddy coves as reactionary and pretentious but social markers such as the one that makes you think you know what Art is meant to do or be, served in George's day to separate the wheat from the chavs haha. Much as it does, today.
JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO SEE WHAT ISAAC D'ISRAELI SAID ABOUT THE LOT OF THE 'AUTHOR BY PROFESSION'.
No comments:
Post a Comment