MANY YEARS AGO, when I was a sub-editor at the New Leader magazine, I tried to get the literary journalist Dwight Macdonald, whom at the time I much admired, to write something for the magazine. I don’t remember what it was I wanted him to write–a book review, I think–but I do recall his writing back to say that, sorry, he couldn’t do as I requested because he was–I shall never forget the phrase–“a money writer,” and the New Leader was famous for its low pay.
I say “low pay,” but this, in those days, was a euphemism. The first piece I myself wrote for publication appeared there, in 1959, when I was 22 and in the Army, stationed at Little Rock, Arkansas. At first I felt thrilled to have something published; then I began to wonder if, along with the thrill, I might make a few bucks into the bargain. I didn’t know it at the time, but the editor of the New Leader, a man named S.M. Levitas, was notably–as they might put it in Hollywood–low budget. He was said to have smoked two packs of cigarettes a day without ever buying any. Sub-editors would enter his office obstreperously demanding a raise and would depart in defeat with the gift of a review copy of some novel of tertiary interest.
I wrote to Mr. Levitas inquiring about the payment for my piece, wondering if it might somehow have gone astray, perhaps in the mail. He wrote back to say that I was “still a young man and perhaps unaware that the truth had no price tag. The New Leader does not pay its contributors.” The following sentence, I felt, could have used a transition but received none: “I am here to encourage you to do more writing for our magazine.”
Over the years I have made the astounding discovery that between writing for money and writing for no money, writing for money is much to be preferred. True, there are times when larger fees mean poorer audiences; and there are other times–when a genuinely good cause is involved–when writing for nothing can be an honor. But where possible, better to be, in Dwight Macdonald’s phrase, “a money writer.”
Yet, after more than forty years at the magical keyboard, I have always been secretly (until now) amazed that anyone is actually willing to pay me for the mere construction of sentences on topics mostly of my own choosing. Oughtn’t I instead to be paying them to help defray the costs of paper and postage, or at least to be sending thank-you notes (perhaps accompanied by ten-pound boxes of Whitman’s Samplers) to the printers who are good enough to set my words in print? Over the years, I have kept quiet about this, cashed the checks, and tremblingly awaited word that I would have to return all the money.
I thought of the long-dead Sol Levitas a couple of months ago when my agent sent me an e-mail reporting that a new magazine, whose readership was to be made up of multi-millionaires, wanted me to write a piece on the current distinction between Old Money and New Money, for which it would pay me $5 a word. The only drawback was that the editor wanted only 700 words. Still, at $5 a word I would write a confession to multiple murders, and wrote back to my agent, in the words of James Joyce’s Molly Bloom, “Yes I said yes I will yes.”
I was about to leave on a week’s holiday in California with my wife and granddaughter, ending with a two-day stay at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. (As I grow older, I seem to require irregular small injections of high luxe.) I thought that my fee for this little piece, $3,500, would nicely cover our expenses for the week. I wrote it out, in longhand, on the plane out to the coast, thinking how just the world was when talent was so nicely recognized and handsomely rewarded.
Back in Chicago, I learned that the editorship of the magazine had changed, and that a piece on the subject of Old and New Money was no longer wanted. My agent–who has the splendid first name, for someone in her profession, of Hope–wrote to the magazine that it ought nonetheless to pay me the full fee, for after all I had written the piece that was commissioned. They felt otherwise. Threats were hurled, but to no avail. Finally a kill fee of 20 percent, or $700, was offered. It was accepted with properly acrimonious regrets. But before a check was sent, an announcement from the magazine reported that all payments were to be delayed by sixty days. My guess is that the magazine will go under and that I shall never see a penny.
Am I justified henceforth, I wonder, in thinking of myself as a $5-a-word man? Much as I would like to, the answer is probably, alas, no. The truth may or may not have a price tag, but I begin to get the feeling that maybe I ain’t no money writer. —
Joseph Epstein
