Hired Pens: Professional Writers in America's Golden Age of Print

Weber, an American studies professor at Notre Dame, is one of the finest writers on writers. Previous authors have covered the ground he walks in this new book, but no one has covered it better. Weber focuses on the transformation of American culture, from one that did not allow writers to make a living as full-time freelancers to one that began supporting such a species after the Civil War and continued to support a relatively small number of risk-taking wordsmiths through the 20th century. Depending on Weber's evaluation of each specific writer he chronicles, she or he is either a ""skilled literary craftsman"" or a ""Grub Street hack"" churning out ""good bad stuff"" month after month, year after year. Weber makes it clear from the start that he plans to give short shrift to ""high-culture literary artists,"" so the book has little to say about Hemingway, Wharton and the like. It has plenty to say, however, about writers whose lives are less frequently chronicled, including Mary Roberts Rinehart, David Graham Phillips, James M. Cain, John Bartlow Martin, Zane Grey and about a dozen others. Like most authors writing about the freelance life, Weber romanticizes from time to time what is rarely romantic. But he always tempers it with passages explaining the frequently depressing reality of selling second-rate work to pay the bills. Weber is a masterful writer, but he also relies heavily on the autobiographical writings of the subjects he has chosen; that reliance is not misplaced because the passages he cites are so pertinent and illuminating. (Dec.)