>"According to MacShane, after Chandler returned to the United States in 1912 and spent a brief, miserable stint stringing tennis rackets and picking apricots, he realized he needed a professional skill to survive. He enrolled in a three-year correspondence course in bookkeeping and, fueled by his rigorous classical education from Dulwich College, reportedly tore through the entire curriculum in just six weeks"What others authors had non-literary but mentally demanding full-time jobs?I can think of:>Franz Kafka: senior insurance executive (albeit working six hours a day)>Wallace Stevens: insurance executive>T. S. Elliot: bank worker>Philipp Myer: investment banker
Huysmans was a public servantAnton Chekov was a doctor
>>25257315ok but which one of them has a more intense belief in god?
>>25257315Did Chekov actually work full-time though? He seemed like such a roving dandy.Also probably should include:>Philip Larkin: head librarian>Louis-Ferdinand Celine: doctor (probably full-time idk)
Melville is your man
>>25257321he did, which is why the vast majority of his work is short stories -- he didn't have time for longer work, the plays came once he had enough money to do something longer
>>25257321borges was also a librarian
>>25257419I'm pretty sure Borges did barely any work as a librarian. Remember reading something about his becoming a librarian because the government wanted full employment and he just sat in the basement of a library with a bunch of other nominally employed 'librarians' who had barely any work to do.
The more i learn about Chandler, the more i admire him.
>“down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.>“He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.>“The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”
