Writing for Money

Háskóli Íslands Hugvísindasvið Bókmenntir, menning og miðlun Writing for Money The Muse and the Market in the English Newspaper Novel from the Nineteeth to Twenty-First Centuries Ritgerð til MA-prófs í Bókmenntir, menning og miðlun Mark Asch Kt.: 120684-5079 Leiðbeinandi: Júlían Meldon D’Arcy Maí 2014 Asch, “Writing for Money” May, 2014 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Introduction 3 The Nineteenth-Century Newspaper Novel 8 Anthony Trollope, The Warden (1855) 8 George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72) 12 George Gissing, New Grub Street (1891) 27 The Twentieth-Century Newspaper Novel 36 Evelyn Waugh, Scoop (1938) 36 Malcolm Muggeridge, Picture Palace (1934) 41 Michael Frayn, Towards the End of the Morning (1967) 46 Philip Norman, Everyone’s Gone to the Moon (1995) 57 The Twenty-First-Century Newspaper Novel 65 Annalena McAfee, The Spoiler (2011) 65 Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists (2010) 74 Conclusion 81 Works Cited 84 1 Asch, “Writing for Money” May, 2014 Abstract The descriptor “hack,” as in hack writer, was slang for a prostitute before becoming common shorthand for a journalist in the early years of commercial printing in England. In linking these two types of dubious work-for-hire, the implication is that writing, the ultimate act of human thought and expression, is, like the physical act of love, too important to be sullied by professionalism. For the entire history of the print media, the dichotomy between muse and market—between soul and body—has been as theoretically pervasive as it has been functionally absent. This essay traces this dichotomy through a survey of the genre it identifies as “the English newspaper novel.” The English newspaper novel considers the possibility of “hacks” producing work of objective aesthetic or public-service value within a subjective literary marketplace, and assesses the viability of writing as not just a profession but a genuine vocation, within the realities of the newspaper industry. Selections from the nineteenth century—Anthony Trollope’s The Warden (1855), George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-72), and George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891)— consider the rise of industrial capitalism, and the commensurately widening newspaper marketplace, and fret over the subsumption of culture into the sphere of economic and exchange, as well as of the potential mechanization of personal initiative. As the genre progresses, greater professional specialization among newspaper workers leads to greater emphasis—often darkly comic—on the workplace as a fictional milieu, and the job as a subject of personal identification, in the twentieth- century newspaper novels Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, Picture Palace by Malcolm Muggeridge, Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn and Everyone’s Gone to the Moon by Philip Norman. In more recent times, as new forms of media chip away at the prominence of the newspaper industry, the cutthroat competition and obsolescence depicted in Annalena McAfee’s The Spoiler and Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists suggests the ultimate futility of personal identification with professional writing. Ironically, however, it is in the current moment that the newspaper novel draws its most positive conclusions about the objective value of newspaper work. 2 Asch, “Writing for Money” May, 2014 Literature has become a profession. It is a means of subsistence, almost as certain as the bar or the church. The number of aspirants increases daily, and daily the circle of readers grows wider. -George Henry Lewes (299) Hacks: An Introduction The term “hack,” as in hack writer, originally meant “hackney,” a hired horse, before it became common shorthand for a hired woman, then for a hired writer in the early years of commercial printing in England (Clarke, 5). The obvious implication is of moral censure. In linking these two types of dubious work-for-hire, the implication is that writing, the ultimate act of human thought and expression, is, like the physical act of love, too important to be sullied by professionalism. For the entire history of the print media, the dichotomy between muse and market—between soul and body—has been as theoretically pervasive as it has been functionally absent. In this essay, I will trace the relationship between this idealized dichotomy and the more muddled, pragmatic reality, through a survey of the genre I will call the English “newspaper novel.” By this I mean literary novels (specifically excluding thrillers) by English authors, which depict characters making their living from the periodical press. In my selections from the nineteenth century—Anthony Trollope’s The Warden (1855), George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-72), and George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891)—the newspaper is more likely to be seen only from an exterior perspective, and to feature in its employ characters who are socially marginal relative to the overall scope of the novel; nor is journalism, in these novels, synonymous with the contemporary practice of reportage. These novels consider the rise of industrial capitalism, and the commensurately widening literary marketplace, and fret over the subsumption of culture into the sphere of economic and exchange, as well as of the potential mechanization of personal initiative. As the genre progresses, we will see greater professional specialization among newspaper workers, and greater emphasis—often comical—on the workplace as a fictional milieu, and the job as a subject of personal identification. In the twentieth- century newspaper novels Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, Picture Palace by Malcolm 3 Asch, “Writing for Money” May, 2014 Muggeridge, Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn and Everyone’s Gone to the Moon by Philip Norman, a thriving press is the milieu within which an entire class of hacks contemplates their literary work, drawing invariably cynical conclusions about the relationship between personal merit and professional practice. In more recent times, as new forms of media chip away at the prominence of the newspaper industry, the cutthroat competition and transitory newswriting fads depicted in Annalena McAfee’s The Spoiler, and the hard luck and obsolescence of the protagonists of Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists, suggests the ultimate futility of personal identification with professional writing. Ironically, however, it is in the current moment that the newspaper novel draws its most positive conclusions. As the market for newspapers dries up, newspaper writing becomes not opportunistic hackwork, but literature worth preserving. The major themes addressed in the newspaper novel throughout the rise of industrial and then post-industrial society were in place already in the pre-history of the newspaper, which, given the lack of compartmentalization in the first centuries of printed media, doubles as the prehistory of the newspaper novel and its reflections on literary production. In short, the question at hand has to do with the possibility of “hacks” producing work of objective and lasting value. By “objective,” I mean, not dependent upon the judgment of a fickle, amoral marketplace for validation of its merit and utility. Here is John Stuart Mill: In France the best thinkers and writers of the nation write in the journals and direct public opinion; but our daily and weekly writers are the lowest hacks of literature which, when it is a trade, is the vilest and most degrading of all trades because more of affectation and hypocrisy and more subservience to the baser feelings of others are necessary for carrying it on, than for any other trade, from a brothel- keeper up […] (qtd. in Elliott, 177) This criticism was, however, already anticipated by the hacks themselves—as per usual. Ned Ward, the pamphleteer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, had long since described the writer’s life similarly, but much more flippantly, as 4 Asch, “Writing for Money” May, 2014 very much like that of a Strumpet […] and if the reason be requir’d, why we betake our selves to be so Scandalous a Profession as Whoring or Pamphleteering, the same excusive answer will serve us both, viz. that the unhappy circumstances of a Narrow Fortune, hath forced us to do that for our Subsistence. (qtd. in Clarke, 5) This is characteristic of the self-effacement—to put it mildly—which has always defined the reflections of those who write for money. As the status of the newspaperman has evolved, it has been informed equally by a veneration of the freedom of expression, and a deep moral suspicion of expression under the influence of professional expediency. The coexistence of idealized merit and market reality can be seen as early as the English Civil War and Interregnum, when the breakdown of print licensing laws, and the hunger for news of tumultuous times, led to both brave scrambles to break the news of the latest battle, and rank personal and political opportunism. Milton’s eternal defense of free speech—“Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple”—was published alongside “semi-pornographic newsbooks [containing] a mixture of genuine news and dirty jokes described as news” (Clarke, 17-26). Subsequent to the Restoration of both the monarchy and strict censorship laws, journalists were frequently on the payroll of various government agencies and factions (Clarke, 58), both for financial gain and as a safeguard against draconian punishments for sedition (Clarke, 54). Daniel Defoe received Treasury payoffs for his writing for both Whig and Tory papers, and was labeled, perhaps inevitably, “a mean and mercenary prostitute” (Clarke, 48). For Marx, writing during a period in which literary production, like other human labor, was in the process of being harnessed by industry, “prostitution [was] only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the laborer” (Marx 1844). More generally, in Marx’s conception of capitalism, there is always, necessarily, a gulf between “use value” and “exchange value.” Entering into the labor marketplace means submitting to “socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of […] useful objects” (Marx 1867).

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