Compton Mackenzie
0 N October 6 the seventieth birthday of the Society of Authors was celebrated and I was entrusted with the job of reading several messages from eminent seniors unable to attend. Among them was a letter from Mr. Somerset Maugham, from which I venture now to extract a few sentences because they deserve and indeed demand the attention that the human voice cannot secure at a con- vivial occasion.
' You know as well as I do how difficult things are now for the young author. Owing to increasing costs the chances that a publisher will break even, much less make a profit, on a novel by an unknown writer, are very small, and the author cannot expect to make more than very little money out of it. It is seldom that an author establishes himself in the public favour by a first book : generally it takes him many years, even if ,his, talent is considerable, to assemble a sufficient number of readers to provide him even with a modest income. I am told, and I believe it to be true, that there are not ten novelists in our country today who make a living solely by writing fiction. It is true that many authors can now add to their income by writing scripts, speaking on the air and devising plays for television. They are taking a great risk. These side-lines, because they are akin to the novelists' main business, may very well be harmful. We can all mention the names of clever writers who have, with deplorable results, succumbed to the lure of Hollywood. The fine golfer is not likely to win tournaments if he devotes a great part of his time to playing cricket, racquets and tennis. The novelist, I think, is better advised to depend for his livelihood on an occupation of an entirely different kind.
` For in present circumstances, and they are unlikely to change, the fact must be faced that to write fiction cannot be regarded as a,whole time job. I am sure that, like me, you receive in the course of the year a great many letters from young people who wish to become professional writers and ask for advice. Most of them have some sort of job and express a determination to leave it. I don't knoW how you deal with them: I beseech them to stick to. their jobs and tell them that unless they have sufficient means to provide them with board and lodging, it is madness to enter upon this precarious calling. If their urge is strong enough, they will somehow or other find time to write. Some months ago there was a correspondence in The Author which dealt with the difficulties' short story writers now encounter to get their stories published. One of them seemed to be of opinion that his were refused by editors and publishers because they were too intelligent, too subtle and too artistic to satisfy the debased taste of the ordinary reader. That did not seem to me to make sense. I should have thought that if you want to be read, you must write what readers want to read. If you are impelled to write what people don't want to read, you must content yourself with the pleasure you have got out of the exercise of your creative instinct. But for heaven's sake, if you are a woman, marry a man who can afford to keep you; and if you are a man stick to your job in the bank or the office.'
I had been consoling myself for the disappearance of magazines and literary weeklies with the reflection that broad- casting had more than made up for that by the opportunities it dffered to the young author, and now here is one who turned from writing novels to writing plays for a while before he returned to writing novels and plays suggesting that he may have imperilled his future as a novelist by going to the theatre for a living. Would Of Human Bondage have been a better novel if Mr. Maugham had made the writing of it an occupa- tion for any leisure he could snatch as a doctor in practice ? It may be doubted; I think he was right to burn his boats after Liza of Lambeth and decide to write for his living, even if it did involve writing those plays which set him free to write what he wanted to write when and where he chose. And after all they were good plays.
Now for this question of advice to young people who wish to become professional writers. I am always discouraging when I am asked for mine because I do not believe that people who ask for advice possess the self-confidence which is the primary requisite for anybody who aspires to earn his living by his pen. It never entered my own head for a second to ask anybody's advice about my prospects as a writer. While my first novel was being sent round to publisher after publisher for over two years I always assumed that the publisher was wrong in rejecting it.
However, having started off by writing plays I did ask myself whether I had made a mistake in writing a novel. So I left that for the future to decide and went back to plays. That led me to dramatise Kipps, which although my version was not performed taught me how to write Cockney dialogue. Bearing in mind. that invaluable lesson, I wonder if Mr. Maugham is right in being so distrustful of script writing for radio. It seems to me that the aspiring novelist can learn a great deal from broadcasting.
Mr. Maugham's appeal to young authors to stick to their jobs is to some extent belied by his own generous endowment which enables the fortunate young author that wins it to enjoy a year abroad. But what happens to his job during that year abroad ?
Writing has always been a precarious livelihood. What blackens today for the Muses is the preposterous system of taxation which deprives a young author of the security he could have gained once upon a time from an early success. X has written a couple of novels from which he has earned £200. He writes a third which with the help of Book Clubs, film-rights and the favour of the reading public in the English- speaking world brings him £30,000; of this the surtax allows him to keep about a fifth. If the whole of that fifth be invested it will not provide him in these days with an income large enough to consider himself financially independent and therefore able in the future to write without regard to monetary reward. If X were allowed to lend the whole of his £30,000 to the State he would receive enough income from it to write in peace for the rest of his life.
But we need not take so exceptional a case. The moderately successful young writer today is often prevented by taxation from gaining experience of the world and his work suffers accordingly by seeming unsophisticated in spite of a defiant display of sophistication.
Harassed taxpayers who resent any concession to authors forget that the successful book, and even the unsuccessful book, is providing taxable material. The publisher, the book- seller, the printer, the paper-maker and the binder are all taxed on what they make out of books, and the author, who provides the book deserves as much consideration as any other original producer. Moreover, the author merely enjoys a long lease of his own products, ,which after his death become public property in due course.
It is unimaginable that any young author now at the begin- ning of his career will find himself fifty years hence in the osition of Mr. Maugham today, and without doubt Mr. Maugham was conscious of that when he wrote his letter for me to read to my fellow authors. Nevertheless, those who must write will ignore his prudent counsel and nobody will be better pleased than Mr. Maugham himself if they ignore it with success to themselves.
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