WRITERS are perishable creatures. One such as Sheridan died under a horse blanket in a stable in London, author of such fine plays as The School for School. Oscar Wilde's last words are reported from a garret in Paris while looking at the wallpaper: "One of us just has to go".
Dean Jonathan Swift was of the opinion that when a genius appears, there is also a confederacy of dunces to keep him out. Confederacy of Dances was also the title of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by the late John Kennedy Toole, who was awarded the prize posthumously, after he committed suicide in despair about the prospects of ever getting it published. Set in New Orleans, it deals with a motley array of colourful characters.
Will Shakespeare was not without a patron. He was Lord Southampton to whom the bard dedicated a poem, Venus and Adonis. Without this benefactor, he could not have written many of his great plays. James Joyce without the financial support of Harriet Weaver, Sylvia Beach and the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop in Paris, could not have completed Ulysses. Nobel Prize Winner Derek Walcott and Walt Whitman have something in common. They both published their own early work. The fortunes of literary aspirants engaged in the pen and in profession in today's world have not altered hugely.
Book of Kells
With the help of a double week holiday DHSS payment in London, I succeeded in attaining my modest first publication of a book of poems. Under the auspices of the National Poetry Society and its director, and with a little help from friends, I got it into print.
While so engaged in the environs of Long Acre in Covent Garden and its select upmarket bookshops, which seemed happy to take on board my modest volume, I saw a first edition of Ernest Hemingway's first volume of poetry for sale in one premier bookshop, under a glass case priced at £2,000. Little did Ernest know that while engaged in trying to catch pigeons with his coat in Paris, his first literary efforts would later fetch such a sum.
Writing, like art, depends on hard work and commitment, just like all the other careers in life, as well as on luck and a degree of talent. What makes an accountant or successful banker out of one person's character mould, will produce a writer from another shape.
But there are differences. Some writers, like many other artists, have led irregular lives with all the resulting economic uncertainty. This they channel successfully into their work. No life is a straight line, more an awkward squiggle, which through description, renders at times an illumination of all life.
Talent surfaces
In spite of an acceptable level of struggle and adversity, talent does surface sooner or later. Breaking ground, it cuts through all the dross of cliche, irrelevant pub talk and barroom gossip. It deserves a place in the sun after many dark hours in the subterranean caverns of growth, whilst tasting some of life's Inferno.
In his book titled On Writing, Henry Miller recalls the time when he was trying to pursue his calling. He felt like a buoy in the ocean, just sitting there waiting for something to happen. He later wrote many fine books, not least Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer.
He left full employment in America to pursue his uncertain future in Paris. The pitfalls were many and various, but he came through, shining like a lamp to such an extent that he has become an inspiration to those who came later.
Not all literature neatly adapts itself into the mainstream publishing net of the modern world, with its financial order and hierarchy. Sponsorship and self publishing are sometimes a happy safety valve. "Silence, exile and cunning" was James Joyce's famous maxim. implicit in the cunning is the ingenuity to use all the levers in the engine room. The only real criterion is that the literary ship going off the slipway will find passengers to come aboard to enjoy the view.