The Perspiring Writer Magazine

These writers had a policy of insuring themselves against starvation. It’s time to unveil the first batch of winners in the first-ever Perspiring Writer Snoozie Awards, awarded to those writers who, in the opinion of the judges (me), held the most boring, stifling, mundane and soul-sucking day jobs ever. 

I’m taking advertising copywriter, proofreader, editor, reference librarian, and writing teacher off the table--not because these activities can’t be boring, but because so many writers have pursued them, it’s impossible to differentiate among the degrees of ennui and angst they may have suffered in the process.

That still leaves us with so many winners it’s going to take two full columns to reveal them all. This issue we’ll concentrate our efforts on the category: Day Job least in keeping with the tradition of Lord Byron ...

Insurance agent

Second runner-up: Franz Kafka

This angst-ridden novelist was beaten down by his father’s disapproval of his writing and never really believed he could make a living at writing anyway, so he took a law degree and got a job at the Assicurizioni Generali Insurance Company in 1907, at the age of 24.

He disliked the long hours and poor working conditions there, however, and soon quit. (Perhaps this is where he picked up the rather negative view of bureaucracy that would figure so prominently in much of his work.) He lived with his parents and three sisters and wrote in the evenings.

He got a job the next year at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, where the far less taxing hours (8-2) were much more to his liking and afforded him time to think and write. He stayed there the rest of his working life and was actually quite good at his work; his suggestions for policy changes are credited with saving the lives of many workers. He died at 41, far from famous, leaving instructions with his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to burn his manuscripts.

First runner-up: Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens showed great literary promise while attending Harvard but had to withdraw when the family ran out of money for tuition. After a fling as a reporter for the New York Evening Post, he, like Kafka, buckled under to a domineering father’s wishes and went to law school.

His degree from the New York School of Law netted him jobs at various law shops in New York City until, in 1908, at the age of 29, he accepted a job at the American Bonding Company, an insurance firm. Turned out he, again like Kafka, was quite good at insurance and rose to become a vice-president at Hartford Accident and Indemnity, where he stayed for the rest of his life, inspecting surety claims.

Rather than finding the work stifling, he apparently feared that he would become isolated if he left his high-paying job to concentrate solely on writing his poetry. “It gives a man character as a poet,” he said, “to have this daily contact with a job.” And besides, “poetry and surety claims aren’t as unlikely a combination as they may seem. There’s nothing perfunctory about them for each case is different.”

He walked the two miles to work each day, composing poetry as he went. He would allow someone to walk with him only if they promised not to talk.

In the event that the winner in this category is unable to serve for any reason, Mr. Stevens will be awarded the crown. 

Okay, now is the time you've all been waiting for. Drum roll, please.

And the Snoozie in the category of insurance goes to … Tom Clancy.

You might have figured Mr. Clancy must be a former CIA operative or a five-star general, at least, to be able to write the kind of military/techno-thrillers that are praised for their detail and accuracy.

Far from it. The son of a mail carrier and a credit employee, Clancy married into the insurance business, taking as his bride an insurance agency manager named Wanda Thomas. 

He became an insurance agent in Baltimore and later in Hartford, Connecticut (that insurance mecca), and eventually wound up owning the O.F. Bowen Agency in Owings, Maryland.

Military service? Poor eyesight disqualified him, but he could see well enough to embark on a lifelong passion for researching the armed forces and military technology and turning the information into the gold of bestselling fiction. 

A relatively unknown publisher in Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval Institute Press, published the completely unknown Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, in 1984. Public praise for the book by a certain Ronald Reagan, then President of the United States, shot the book into public prominence and Clancy to the top of the bestseller list, a perch he’s never relinquished.

He’s written about the arms race, the Cold War, the South American drug trade, IRA terrorism, nuclear proliferation, all the fun stuff, earning respect from the military if not always from literary critics.

As wonderfully boring as the day jobs of these three great writers might have been, we’re still a column away from awarding the Ultimate Snoozie. 

Next issue we’ll audit a few bankers and a dentist and work the night shift at a power plant before finally revealing the Greatest Snoozer of them all.

It’s still not too late for you to make a nomination. (In fact, it’s even all right to nominate yourself.) And I’d love to hear from a few insurance agents who want to tell me how fascinating their jobs actually are. Email me at mcook@dcs.wisc.edu with your nominees and diatribes.