All you struggling artists and writers out there, take heart. It may seem like you’re just spinning your wheels at that random job you got walking dogs/painting fences/selling umbrellas on the corner, but you could find your inspiration for the Next Great American Novel at any moment. Or, think of it this way: one day you’ll get to talk about whatever you’re doing now as a charming aside in interviews with the New York Times. After all, from pirating to condom sales to modeling, many of the most famous authors in American history had a few pretty weird day jobs to pay the bills before they hit the big time, and we don’t know about you, but we find that to be a comforting thought. Click through to see some of the strangest day jobs of beloved authors before they were famous, and then get back to work.
J.D. Salinger once served as the entertainment director on the H.M.S Kungsholm, a Swedish luxury liner. We wonder if he was any good at that.
Between graduating from the Colorado School of Mines and starting his MFA at Syracuse, George Saunders worked in a slaughterhouse, in a convenience store, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, as a groundsman, as a roofer, and as a geophysicist.
Franz Kafka was the Chief Legal Secretary of the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute, obviously.
The international Tom McCarthy was a nude model at an art school in Prague, tended bar at an Irish pub in Berlin, and fed waiters cat food as a sous-chef in a restaurant in Amsterdam.
John Steinbeck ran a fish hatchery in Lake Tahoe. He also led guided tours of the place, during one of which he met his first wife, Carol Henning.
Comments (30)
The Apostle Paul, who wrote a very large portion of the best selling book in history was a tent maker… Ha. Not sure anyone will find that relevant, I just thought it kinda fit.
Stephen King’s name is spelled with a ‘ph’ and not a ‘v’.
Famous authors are all men? You only managed to include two, and not until the end? What gives? Not impressed, Flavorpill.
This article directly rips off this article from Publishers Weekly:
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=6243
Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald made a living as party animals.
sad to see that, john.
I love this kind of thing. In fact, several of these bits of literary trivia were in my book, A BOOK OF AGES (Harmony 2008/Three Rivers Press 2010), as well as filmmakers and other artists who had “day jobs” before success found them. (Did anyone know Quentin Tarantino worked in a porn theater? That Hitchcock was a trainspotter?) Flavorwire collected some of my book’s fun anecdotes a few years ago.
http://flavorwire.com/35961/exclusive-decoding-the-numbers-in-eric-hansons-a-book-of-ages
Would love another post like this that included more than 2 women. I have to imagine there are plenty of women who held interesting jobs–or were accomplished household managers/child rearers–before they became full-time writers. And many who continued those jobs/domestic lives while writing.
Not that this isn’t fascinating but it would be even more interesting to see how women did it, either “back in the day” or presently, since has always been significant pressure on women to be wives and mothers and nothing but.
more women, pls.
van morrison was a window cleaner in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
[...] Odd-Job Authors: Don’t worry, you still can write the Great American Novel, no matter what job you currently have. Check out the weird jobs famous writers had before they made it. (Flavorwire) [...]
The great poet Wallace Stevens was the vice-president of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company for most of his life. After he won the Pulitzer Prize he was invited to the faculty of Harvard for a position and declined so as to continue working as a vice-president of HAIC.
Yes, the best selling and most ground breaking and influential writers were men. Would you prefer more women were included out of pity or to appease angry women?
Was Harper Lee’s generous friend named “Truman”, by chance?
For William and Flavorpill – A few bestselling, ground-breaking, and influential women writers from the past and present:
Jane Austen
Charlotte Bronte
Ayn Rand
Amy Tan
Eudora Welty
Nora Roberts
Carson McCullers
Toni Morrison
Louisa May Alcott
Willa Cather
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Kate Chopin
Betty Friedan
Rita Mae Brown
Agatha Christie
Mary Shelley
Patricia Cornwell
Hildegard of Bingen
Margaret Atwood
Anne Frank
Baroness Orczy
Dorothy Parker
Sojourner Truth
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ursula K. LeGuin
Virginia Woolf
Zora Neale Hurston
Sappho
George Sand
Emily Dickinson
Colette
Alice Walker
And that’s just off the top of my head. Anyone with an internet connection and an open mind can easily come up with more. But I guess the open mind is the key.
[...] – meseriile ciudate ale scriitorilor înainte să fie scriitori [...]
[...] Kurt Vonnegut managed a Saab dealership, Robert Frost worked in a factory, and George Saunders was a Beverly Hills doorman. Life before the writing dodge. Here. [...]
Thanks, Lisa, for including that list!
We don’t really need anyone’s pity, William. Too busy breaking ground and selling lots of books. Your uninformed condescension is appreciated, though. I agree with others on this list that the relative lack of female writers and writers of color is disappointing, especially because most writers I can think of had interesting “day jobs.”
Stephen King was also an English teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine.
[...] If you want to put a smirk on your face, check out the always-entertaining Flavorwire’s article “Strange Day Jobs of Authors Before They Were Famous.“ [...]
All I see is the advertisements, not the posts on the authors, anyone else having the same issue?
Justin, loved your reply about the Apostle Paul! :O)
Kirsten and Lisa, I think you’re jumping to a false conclusion that the gender distribution of authors is discriminatory against female authors – if you note the title, it’s “Strange Day Jobs of Authors”, so the selection is based around who (in the eyes of the author) had the most interesting employment. I encourage you to find the other professions for the female writers listed, and finding them sufficiently uncommon, share them here. William is just being inflammatory.
What’s most disappointing is the unattributed and probably unapproved use of the article that John posted. I understand that Flavorwire mainly aggregates content from other sources, but this is shameless plagiarism and reflects very poorly on the quality of this site as a whole.
And a third note – George Orwell’s time as a British officer is the topic of his short story ‘Shooting An Elephant.’ Had the author done _any_ original research, she would probably have found this.
Fascinating. A few years earlier than any of the mentioned authors: August Strindberg worked in the Royal Academies Geography division; Henrik Ibsen attempted to become librarian at the Rome Scandinavian library.
[...] few months ago, we rounded up some of the strangest day jobs of beloved authors had before they were famous — and in the process discovered that William S. Burroughs was [...]
[...] few months ago, we dull adult some of the strangest day jobs of dear authors had before they were famous — and in a routine detected that William S. Burroughs was once an [...]
What abour Archibald Macleish? He was an editor with Fortune magazine in the late 1920s…
Last year’s Giller winner Johanna Skibsrud worked with at-risk youth in the Canadian Arctic and as a wilderness instructor.
Alice Munro used to pick tobacco, waitress and work in her husband’s bookstore.
Anne Cameron was a farmer-herbalist
Both Charles Bukowski and John Prine worked for the postal service.
[...] by this list: Strange Day Jobs of Authors Before they were Famous, from Flavorwire, I decided to list all the jobs I have ever had. I have had more and more varied [...]
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