Writers' obligation is to their craft, not the public

• Source: Global Times
• [00:28 October 30 2009]
• Comments

By James Palmer

Yu Qiuyu is one of those famous people foreigners have never heard of. He's virtually unknown (and untranslated) in the West, but in China he's a massively popular public intellectual, an essayist known for his sharp criticism and provocative stances.

Like many such figures, he's sometimes given to mouthing offfor the sake of it, but he can also write beautifully and thoughtfully.

Recently, however, he's been taking some public heat not for his controversial writing, but for his fi nancial choices. It's just been revealed that he is an investor in the Xujiahui Commercial Center Co, a Shanghai shopping corporation which is about to be publicly listed.

Yu stands to make some 60 million yuan ($8.79 million) from this, more money than he's ever made from his books.

Some netizens have been up in arms, complaining that Yu's newfound talent for investment and fi nance is taking him away from his true calling, and that materialistic interests may start influencing his writing.

Writers' love of money is nothing new though. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," as the English polymath and author Samuel Johnson once cynically put it.

There are plenty of great authors who wrote only for their art, of course, or for a tiny audience. Emily Dickinson's poetry was read by about 300 people in her lifetime, and millions afterward.

Yet Johnson is still partially right. The diaries of many writers reveal a burning concern with money. Trinidadian Nobel Prize winner VS Naipaul, as revealed in a recent biography, was obsessed with "making his million" – which he eventually achieved with the help of his brilliantly canny literary agent.

Others let their obsession with wealth lead them into illfated choices.

Samuel Clemens, better known as "Mark Twain," lost most of his fortune, the equivalent of some $7 million today, by investing in a new form of typewriter.