Updating my “writers’ habits of spending” (which I wonder, too, why I didn’t call it “Writers’ Spending Habits”)… Fitzgerald looks to be another of these writers driven to spend well beyond their means, though he could pullback sometimes and was also a good earner, often at the expense of his art. Hemingway (so much more financially successful than Fitzgerald or Faulkner — For Whom The Bell Tolls was a very big seller) was a lot more prudent, complained about his taxes and had support from his wives too. (Hadley received money from a trust fund and the Pfeiffers were rich.)
Question: why do I care about this? I guess it’s because I think of having money as being like having a moat between writing and everything that would keep you from it. Anyone with a lot of money can just pull up the drawbridge and write. But the great writers don’t appear to have seen it that way, is my perception. Like Dostoyevsky playing roulette, there is a real do or die mentality at work.
Leave a comment