Archives for 2004

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

Last week I wrote:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.

To which a reader with a good memory promptly replied:

Your comments today on the book business seem right on. But wasn’t it one of your heroes who said “Only a blockhead writes for anything but money”? I confess I don’t know the context of that remark, but always found it amusing. I would be curious to see your response to the good doc in your blog.

Far be it from me to differ with Samuel Johnson, so I won’t. I’ll simply supply the context of this famous saying, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said,
“I do not see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be
glad to get two hundred pounds, or five hundred pounds, by such a
work.” This shewed both that a journal of his Tour upon the
Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he
uniformly adhered to that strange opinion, which his indolent
disposition made him utter: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.” Numerous instances to refute this will occur to
all who are versed in the history of literature.

Since Dr. Johnson is always right, I can but yield to his greater wisdom. The only defense I can offer is that I didn’t say “money,” I said “a lot of money.” But that’s pretty lame, right? Right.

Never let it be said that I’m unwilling to publicly admit to having been caught blogging with my pajama pants down!

I went through today’s snail mail and found an envelope from Harcourt that contained the dust jacket for All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine–the real thing, not a photocopy. It’s even more handsome than I imagined.

As I ogled the finished product, it hit me that I’d forgotten to ask the managing editor in charge of All in the Dances how the photo insert ended up. (That’s how distracted I was by my vacation!) As you may recall, we were having permission problems with one image, a photo of Balanchine at the piano taken by Walker Evans, and Harcourt asked me to come up with a Plan B in case Plan A fell through at 11:59:59. It was a tricky assignment: I had to find a picture that would fit into the same space, both physically and chronologically, and if at all possible it had to be out of copyright. I went on the Web and quickly located a terrific photo of Igor Stravinsky and Serge Diaghilev, and within a day or two Harcourt reported back that it was in the public domain. I breathed a sigh of relief, went off on vacation…and forgot all about it.

I just shot an e-mail off to the Harcourt back office in San Diego, which wrote back immediately to tell me that they’d had to go with Plan B. That was fine with me (I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me in the first place to include a photo of Diaghilev). And that’s really, truly the end of the story. All in the Dances went to the printer while I was on vacation. We’ll be getting back the first copies at the end of September, and it’ll be shipped out to bookstores shortly thereafter.

Order your copy today!

P.S. Harcourt just informed me that the bound galleys have gone out to reviewers. Eeeeee….