Writer's money
Sir: In answer to the compiler of 'A Spectator's Notebook' (August 2) I very much doubt whether there'll be any money in the coffers of Fleet Street by this time next year. If by some miracle there is, it will be only available to NUJ members. In the meantime, writers don't want handouts, merely to be paid for their work — just as composers are.
Of course I support the one-third rule (a minimum of one-third of the library rate to he spent on books by law) and I hope that WAG will do something about it. As far as I know I'm the first person to suggest this rule — see the Spectator for June 28.
Incidentally, it's a rule the principle of which should be applied elsewhere. I not only foresee a library service which buys no new books at all, but a National Health Service with no doctors or nurses or dentists, and an educational system with no teachers. And a BBC with no programmes. Whenever public bodies make cuts, they always cut what is essential. Administrators are never cut — even if they have nothing to administrate.
John Braine Pentons, Onslow Crescent, Woking, Surrey.
Sir: Having read in `A Spectator's Notebook' (August 2) the comments on authors' earnings, I should like to offer congratulations to your contributor on two counts, the first of them being the effortless way in which he establishes himself as an oustanding exception to the rule that onlookers see most of the game. I get the impression that either he has been standing with his back to the scene of action or else that he is quite ignorant of the intricacies of the game — .like so many of those who boo and jeer at football matches. But my fellow authors and I owe him a debt of gratitude for one of the best laughs of the year: his ludicrous advice that we should turn to journalism as a further source of ilicome. That laughter would have been denied us had your notetaker bothered to do a little simple arithmetic and tried to divide the number of book-writers into the numbers of newspapers and periodicals printed in this country. A difficult feat even in these decimalisation days.
My second reason for offering congratulations is based, I confess, to some extent on instinct and a sense of smell, the acid smell of sour grapes. Your contributor is himself obviously a writer of fiction — his lofty disregard for facts is proof of that — but having (I suspect) failed to get his own work published in book form, he has acted on the advice he so generously gives to us and can congratulate himself on being at least one up on Lady Selina Hastings. After all this lady is simply a competent journalist whereas your contributor, while resolutely sticking to the writing of fiction, has managed to get himself a job on The Spectator which he (of all people!) describes as a `citadel of responsible comment!'
My own — and only — comment, and changing the sour grapes metaphor, is that a chip on the shoulder was ever a cause for curvature of the critical spine. Incidentally should you ever decide to try to live up to that fulsome description of your publication, I would gladly provide you with a list of efficient writers — from which to fill an obvious vacancy — and whose admiration and respect for honest journalism is matched only by their contempt for those who merely pose as journalists.
Rupert Browning 61 Onslow Gardens, London SW7,
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