Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Dickens was obsessed by money, even when he'd become a wealthy man, as a result of his own childhood experiences of poverty. He started writing as a parliamentary reporter, and, indeed, was a journalist as well as a novelist throughout his life, a fact which people sometimes forget today.
I think most people would say that Dickens became a significantly better writer over the course of his life. His later novels are a lot better plotted and written than his early books. But make no mistake about it, Dickens was writing the mass entertainment of his day. His novels, serialised in weekly magazines, were very much written for the commercial market. Like Shakespeare, he was writing as a commercial proposition, not as "art".
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Jim Thompson is one of my favourite writers. He may not be very widely known, but he is sometimes compared to Dostoevsky. The man wrote strictly 'pulp', and strictly for money (he was always broke, and
had to write to get by). 'Art' can appear in the strangest places. The definition of art is of course debatable, but it is interesting how the mass entertainment of one era can be among the 'classics' of another. Every artist was a product of his time, and the specific conditions in which he lived. Would all the famous writers we now admire have produced the same words, or better, if even one of these conditions was changed? I've no idea. But the motivation to create is always there, money or not. And the times are constantly changing.
* (do you think Dan Brown will be among the classics of the 25th century?
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