What to Think About Whilst Making Art

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," Samuel Johnson used to say.

A non-annoying Slate article reviewing new biographies of the ugliest, unhappiest, most prodigious writer this world has ever known.

Oh, wait, my bad, it does get a little annoying:

Reading about his life makes clear that Johnson's hard-won independence was something different from the much-celebrated freedom offered by the Internet, which allows any literate person a platform in the form of a Web site or blog. The democracy of the new medium is a good thing, of course, but like our democratic society itself, the Internet tends to encourage amateurism and atomization. It is hard to see how a writer like Johnson could arise in a future when writing is something done casually, in brief blog bursts in one's spare time. And it may not be long before the kind of professional confidence and expertise that Johnson cultivated over a lifetime of paid work will appear as regrettably obsolete as books and newspapers themselves.

This notion of “independence” means what, actually?

Until he was granted a modest royal pension, at the age of 53, he was never financially secure.

Oh, so independence means “being paid by the Queen.” I’m guessing you won’t find too many attacks on the monarchy in his oeuvre. But what were the economic conditions that enabled him to write so much?

Only one thing allowed Johnson's "struggle" to end in a victory. That was London's thriving print culture, which allowed a man like Johnson—a man without connections, good looks, or money—to make it as a writer. Being a professional writer allowed, and compelled, him to turn his indolence into industry: to read and learn about every subject imaginable, so that he could write about them; to try his hand at any genre that would sell; to find the demand in the market (for a dictionary or a biography or a periodical) and meet it.

Hmmm… “find the demand in the market.” Sounds like some version of capitalism, a key element of our democratic society, which seems to be the EXACT conditions under which we are now with the Internet.

So if any of you are ugly or unhappy enough, looks like the job of the “next Samuel Johnson” is open!