Scoop! Journalists in Fiction

An artist humiliated

Will(iam Asquith) Farnaby (Island, Aldous Huxley) is another of those 'artistes' who feel 'humiliated' by having stooped to earn money through mere journalism.

"And all the time I had been wanting to be a poet and finding I simply don't have what it takes. And then, after the War, I had to go into journalism to make money. What I wanted was to go hungry, if necessary, but to try to write something decent - good prose at least, seeing that it couldn't be good poetry."

...

"Wouldn't you be humiliated if you found yourself making money by turning out the cheapest, flashiest kind of literary forgery. I was a success because I was so irredemiably second rate."

Island was first published in 1962, and social class is clearly a factor in Farnaby's framing of his trade. Dr McPhail diagnoses: "Upper class.. but not a member of the military or county sub species."

"Correct. My father was a barrister and political journalist. That is, when he wasn't too busy being an alcoholic."

Bloomsbury-born Farnaby is beginning life from rather a different perspective than Constance Amory, Gary Pymore or Joe Donovan. It's as Dawn Stone remarks in Fragrant Harbour:

I daresay if I'd gone to Oxbridge I would have had at least half a dozen chums who fell out of bed into useful, networkable positions on the kind of paper I wanted to work for.   

• Thanks to Jack Yan for suggesting Island

Ambition(2)

More from Ink. Hugh and Julian are in the pub, sitting near a noisy fruit machine.

"How about you, Hughie? Any secret ambition?"

"I once thought I'd like to be a ----" he said.

The machine nearest them gave a loud, trilling squawk.

"A waiter, Hughie?" said Julian. He sounded surprised. "I would have thought you would have set your sights a bit higher than that."

"No," said Hugh, "a writer."

"Ah."

Julian's reaction suggested this was an equally unusual ambition.

"I suppose I'd like to do at least one thing I can be proud of," said Hugh.

Julian laughed, "Hardly in the right profession for that, are we?"

"No," Hugh agreed.

Writer's block

Battersby stared at (Hugh). "You can't have writer's block," he said. "You're not a writer. This is journalism. It doesn't matter if a few words are the wrong way round."

"You don't think so?"

"Of course not. You can't go worrying about things like that. As long as they're roughly in the right order that's as much as anyone can hope for."

• Ink, John Preston. See He's a reporter, she's a writer.

He's a reporter, she's a writer

Authors of fiction tend to divide those journalists who produce copy (as opposed to editors, executives and publishers) into two types, the reporter or the writer. The distinction is often driven by plot. If it's about action, the reporter - the hack - is a useful way of getting to the heart of the action, notepad in hand, sometimes as the central character; if the requirement is more character-driven, they may well be a writer - an artiste (usually failed and miserable).

Constance Amory and Annika Bengtzon fall firmly - and honourably - into the hack category but many others are either would-be novelists or dilettantes who can't get a real job so fall into journalism as a way staying afloat - and wouldn't spot a real news story if it punched them in the mouth. As in real life, there is also a fairly sizeable subset of 'writer', the celebrity socialite or sports star who, despite being unable to scrawl a compelling note to the milkman, manages to knock out a regular column for a tidy fee.

Lionel Watson, in AN Wilson's My Name is Legion, is a typical artiste, 'a fallen archangel' who left Oxford to become a travel writer and poet, whose book on the Amazon is a minor classic, but who has no money...

It seemed foolish not to accept any journalistic work offered as a way of paying the mortagage on a small flat in Clapham....

After a year or two, however it seemed that journalism was much more lucrative and much less hard work than 'proper writing'....

It had certainly killed something inside him when he joined the Legion.