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Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit
MP Publishing
October 2010
On Sale: October 1, 2010
272 pages ISBN: 1849821089 EAN: 9781849821087 Hardcover
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Fiction Family Life
Dear Booklover, P.J. O’Rourke said, “Creative writing teachers should be
purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words
‘Write what you know’ is confined to a labor camp…The blind
guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how
much combat do you think he saw?” Like O’Rourke, William Faulkner had his own take on the
Other Commandment for writers, the one that goes, “Thou
shalt not quit thy day job.” Faulkner, who won the 1949
Nobel Prize for Literature, had, twenty-five years before,
worked at the post office in his hometown of Oxford,
Mississippi. Mister Faulkner was known to say, “One of the saddest things
is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours, is
work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight
hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.” He must have been determined to give something else
(writing, we may assume, perhaps a glass of whisky on the
side) a whirl when he tendered his resignation to the
postmaster. “I reckon I’ll be at the beck and call of folks
with money all my life,” he said, “but thank God I won’t
ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son of a
bitch who’s got two cents to buy a stamp.” The authors in this book have tried their hands at some of
the same jobs you have held, or still keep. They’ve worked
on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought
fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied,
delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for
the church, sold underwear, and, yes, delivered the mail.
They’ve driven garbage trucks. And like William Faulkner they have quit those day jobs. And like Faulkner they write. These authors tell good tales.
If you wonder what work preceded their efforts to produce a
great pile of books, if you would like to know how they made
the transition to, as William Gay said, “clocking in at the
culture factory,” then this is the book you’ve been waiting for. Sonny Brewer, Editor
Fairhope, Alabama
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