Against the Wind: An Autobiography by Household Geoffrey
Author:Household, Geoffrey [Household, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504008150
Goodreads: 24823150
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1958-01-01T08:00:00+00:00
Craftsman
I AM always ready to hear a man talk shop so long as he can express himself. How he masters his material, why this way and not another, and what the conflict is between his real and his imagined purposeâthough this one can but deduce from his eloquenceâfascinate me in the hedge-trimmer as in Cellini. That is my excuse, for I have invariably tried to write what I myself would like to read.
I have reached in my profession only a rank equivalent to a wartime major-generalâamong, that is, the first two hundred, any of whom may as easily be retired to discomfort as advanced to higher authority. But at that level practice is what counts. One can leave theory to the majors and the marshals, and concentrate upon command.
The life of a writer, especially if he is a slow writer, is inert. He must keep to daily hours, yet he has not the human society of the office; and a desk is less, not more endurable when there is no boss, no subordinate, no secretary for casual conversation, never a cheerful or a difficult client. His working day is short, for no man can drive imagination more than five hours; but at the end of it he is exhausted and, until unwound by time and alcohol, a poor companion to his family and friends.
In theory he can take a holiday when he wishes; in practice he must ask the bossâhimself, that isâwhether so unstandardised a workshop can possibly afford it. Nor can he ever know whether idleness is essential, repaying lost time with doubled energy, or whether he is merely being lazy.
There is no one who can promote him, no one whom it is worth while to impress with his ability or charm. What the public think he is worth, that and no more he will be paid. Editor, publisher and agent may ease for him temporarily the working of the law by which they, too, are bound, but he cannot evade it.
What then is the compensation which can bind a man who is no great lover of the study and has indeed far more affinity to the printer than the librarian into a skilled trade where the working conditions are intolerable and the wage uncertain? It is, I suppose, the making of an object which, to human perception, did not exist before.
That phrase is far looser than it appears. Make a chair without any blue-print from a plank in the garage and a fallen pear-tree, and certainly you will have created an object which did not exist before; make imitation Louis XV as efficiently as you like, but it did exist before. The gradations of originality between the two are the business of the critic. That is what he is for: to remind the mass-producer that he could make as much money quite as pleasantly in commerce, and to assure the determined worker in plank and pear-tree that his chair is indeed a creation and commendable, but that he should study the anatomy of sitters.
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