In my last post, “The Writer’s Life:  The Summer Writers’ Conference,” I described the culture of a Summer Writers’ Conference.  The teaching methods were not perfect, but the conference launched my career as “a literary journalist.” 

It began with what I called “an accidental book review.” Snoozing over the reviews in the local Sunday paper, I thought, “I can do this.” And so I reviewed Alice Adams’s collection of short stories, After You’ve Gone, and submitted it to a small literary journal in California.  I got an acceptance letter, and the editor gave me another assignment.  Oh, by the way, the journal did not pay money, but free books and copies of the magazine.  Who cared? It was a joy.

I used to haunt a second-hand bookstore that carried obscure little magazines and journals. I copied down lists of editors and addresses and sent off my queries.  Hell, yes, they always said.  They were pleased to have an eclectic volunteer who would read anything:  one editor called me Nanook of the North because I lived in a cold northern city.   “Nanook, it’s me.  How do you feel about Frederick Exley?”   I was also briefly a “niche” small press reviewer for another literary journal.  Nobody wanted to review small press books:  they were uneven and often unsatisfactory.  But I remember reviewing Nervous Conditions, by the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, before it was published by a large publishing company and won the Commonwealth Award.  She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.

I love writing essays, too.  I have written about Oprah’s Book Club, reading on mass transit, literary awards, the rising respectability of science fiction, and the career of Elizabeth Wurtzel. And one summer, when my husband and I were in Toronto, we were excited to hear that The Rolling Stones were in town rehearsing for a new tour.  The  Toronto Star published daily articles about “Mick Jagger sightings”:  at midnight or later someone always saw Jagger at a  club or restaurant.  And so I wrote a goofy essay called “Waiting for Mick Jagger.” My husband and I saw no Stones anywhere: I listed tourist spots where the Stones were not. They were not at World’s Biggest Bookstore, nor  at the Market (perhaps The Lawrence Market, I’m no sure), nor at the top of the CN Tower (once the world’s tallest building), nor Cabbagetown, the oldest neighborhood in Toronto, nor at Niagara Falls, which is always nicest on the Canadian side.  I wish I still had this essay. Alas, my cat, Zany, shredded it with  other papers in a box.  But we couldn’t be mad at Zany.

“Clever cat!”

I most often write about bookish subjects.  I have written about book prizes, Goodreads, book clubs, and the pros and cons of shopping at Abebooks  I have been paid something for most of my essays, or should I say underpaid?  Because as Rome falls, or rather, as the newspapers and magazines cut back, and longtime employees trail into into the world to work at low-paying non-union jobs, the newspapers have become what one friend describes as “a blood bath.”  It’s like the fall of Rome:   The emperors provide less and less for  the slaves and freedman (freelancers) even as the cost of living rises and they take more for themselves.

But there’s always fiction…