How much do you think a writer needs to live on? That and five other basic questions were posed by Cyril Connolly over fifty years ago in his literary magazine Horizon, and the same questions are posed again in a book published by Waterstone's in association with the Arts Council of England.
Indeed, the Waterstone's book reproduces Connolly's 1946 survey of fifteen writers as an appendix to its own survey of forty-two contemporary writers, and the result makes for fascinating and sometimes revealing reading.
For instance, it's clear from both surveys that most writers have modest financial expectations. In 1946 Julian MaclarenRoss, George Orwell, Herbert Read and Stephen Spender felt they could get by on £1,000 a year, which is about £20,000 in today's money, and £20,000 is also the annual stipend most mentioned by today's writers, though Alice Thomas Ellis, Claire Tomalin and Rose Tremain feel they could possibly muddle along on £10,000 if they had no dependants.
Beryl Bainbridge points to a "meteoric rise" in her fortunes over the last decade - she now earns more than £35,000 a year. The same figure, Nicholas Shakespeare says wistfully, would give him "a bit of a life".
Elizabeth Bowen caused some tut-tutting in 1946 when she said she'd like to have an annual £3,500 net, but Michael Holroyd has "no quarrel" with today's £70,000 equivalent. Most writers, though, just want parity with people in other lines of work - "as much as anyone else" is the constant refrain in both surveys.
Nor, sensibly, are most of them enamoured of state assistance. "I don't think writers are owed a living by the State," Simon Armitage declares, a view seconded by Beryl Bainbridge ("Absolutely not. Who needs writers?"), Julian Barnes ("Writers should keep their distance from the State. They should be wary of hand-outs when they are young and honours when they are old"), Margaret Foster ("No, and again no, no, no"), Michael Ignatieff ("The state should leave writers alone"), Tim Parks ("No, no and no") , Bernice Rubens ("No - I don't think writers are special") and Hugo Williams ("Yes for me, no for everyone else. In other words, no").
Of course, in surveys like this you can always rely on someone to go entirely against the grain, and Paul Durcan (the only Irish interviewee) gleefully and inimitably obliges. Here are just a few of his pensees:
"A writer needs to have wings. Needs to be able to decide in the morning to get out from under the low, grey cloud and fly to Los Angeles to pray with an old friend and grab a cab to Malibu and gaze at the Pacific."
"My chief preoccupation in life - apart from writing, and climbing mountains in search of beautiful women - is reading books."
"I have never been able to understand why newspaper editors, and television and radio producers, have not been beating my door down to pay me large sums of money for essays on my reading adventures."
"The State should always be doing more for writers. The State can never do enough: whether it is persecuting writers, as in Russia for the last two centuries; or in the Republic of Ireland, where the Arts Council provides writers, artists and composers with a basic, partial income."
"I owe my life to certain women; to the Arts Council of the Republic of Ireland; to my readers; and to the hand of God."
Translate all this back into English and you get: God be good to the Arts Council of the Republic of Ireland for providing me with enough money to chant mantras in Malibu and discover amazing women on exotic mountain-tops. And why not?
Tom Clancy is not among the writers asked to muse about money in the Waterstone's book (which, incidentally, is excellent value at £2 for 210 pages), but then Tom Clancy doesn't have to worry about such mundane matters. Neither, it seems, does he have to worry about actually writing some of the books associated with his name.
Spanish sensibilities have been offended by a new thriller, Balance of Power, which portrays the country in a less-than-flattering light, yet though Clancy's name is embossed in gold on the cover, it's not actually by him.
So who is it by? Well, Jeff Rovin is thanked in the acknowledgments for his "creative ideas" and "invaluable contributions", but the only thing Jeff will say on the matter is that he has "signed a contract of strict confidentiality with Tom Clancy that prevents me from giving any information about this or other books".
All very confusing, made even more confusing by the fact that the book also bears the legend "Created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik". Steve who? And what happened to Jeff? And who actually is writing these books? "Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik are the creators," a spokesperson for the publisher says, "and that's all the information we can give out."
What next, though? Jeffrey Archer novels that aren't written by Jeffrey Archer? On second thoughts, no - who else could write that badly?
Congratulations to David Wheatley, currently Wicklow writer in residence, on winning this year's Rooney Prize for Irish Literature - only the third poet to be honoured in the history of this award.
Mary Dorcey, Susan Connolly, Louise C. Callaghan, Sheila Gorman, Hayley Fox-Roberts and Katherine O'Donnell will be taking part in a Gay Pride poetry reading in Waterstone's of Dawson Street next Thursday at 6.30pm.