Valle-Inclán, Edgar Allan Poe, Cervantes and Balzac suffered financial hardship
Bulgakov, Chekhov and Céline combined writing with the practice of medicine
“Send me some money to keep me from starving,” he wrote. Paul Verlaine to your publisher. Like the French poet, many have traditionally been the economic plight of writers. Some as Valle-Inclan either Edgar Allan Poe They died in abject poverty. Cervantes Y Balzac They made an art of escaping from creditors and in fact the first converted that knowledge into a profession as a tax collector. others like Franz Kafka either Emily Dickinson They never knew the ‘royalties’ that their work would generate over time and, of course, their crucial position in the history of literature. Good commercial reception does not guarantee survival.
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Then and now, being a writer isn’t exactly that certain destiny your parents wish for you. That is why so many authors had alternative professions to writing. Some agreed with conventionality, such as Margaret Atwoodwho earned a living for a time serving coffee or Raymond Chandler who became deputy director of an oil company even though he was fired for his legendary alcoholism. charles bukowski He worked until he was 49 years old as a postman (Faulkner was also a postman, but for a shorter time) to later dedicate himself to writing and destroying his liver in the urban underworld. There are also many doctors in the history of literature: Mikhail Bulgakov Y Anton Chekhov or the poet William Charles Williams, who never left the profession, nor did the uncomfortable Louis-Ferdinand Celine. He was a collaborationist and an ostracized anti-Semite, but in his last days he did not stop caring for the most disadvantaged in a Paris suburb.
Better known is the anecdote that places Jorge Luis Borges as a librarian. It was for 9 years when he had already published a dozen books but no one among his classmates related that strange guy who was not interested in football with the brilliant writer. A colleague without suspecting anything let him know the coincidence of names.