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/lit/ - Literature

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18633367 No.18633367 [Reply] [Original]

* Michel Houellebecq: computer programmer
* Thomas Pynchon: technical writer for Boeing
* Don DeLillo: copywriter at an advertising agency
* Salman Rushdie: copywriter at an advertising agency
* William Gaddis: fact-checker, freelance writer for various corporations
* Jonathan Franzen: research assistant atHarvard tracking earthquake activity
* Kazuo Ishiguro: worked at a homeless charity
* Karl Ove Knausgård: taught high school, sold cassettes, worked at a psychiatric hospital and on an oil platform
* Edward P. Jones: proofreader
* Joan Didion: copywriter and editor for Vogue magazine
* George Saunders: technical writer and geophysical engineer
* Helen DeWitt: dictionary text tagger, copytaker, Dunkin’ Donuts employee, legal secretary, and working at a laundry service
* Roberto Bolaño: dishwasher, campground custodian, bellhop, garbage collector, and other low-paying jobs
* Hilary Mantel: social worker and store assistant
* Sally Rooney: admin job in a restaurant
* Peter Carey: advertising copywriter and various other odd jobs
* Norman Rush: book dealer, teacher, co-director of Peace Corps in Botswana
* António Lobo Antunes: psychiatrist
* Cormac McCarthy: worked part-time at an auto-parts warehouse
* Gerald Murnane: primary school teacher, editor in a government office, bartender
* Haruki Murakami: jazz bar owner
* Aleksandar Hemon: Greenpeace canvasser, sandwich assembly-line worker, bike messenger, graduate student in English literature, bookstore salesperson, andESL teacher

>> No.18633393

>>18633367
>António Lobo Antunes
Caught me off guard there. How did he wind up in this list of meme authors?

>> No.18633535

>>18633393
>Caught me off guard there. How did he wind up in this list of meme authors?
Since Cambojan Civil War is in vogue why not Ultramarine basedness?

>> No.18633849

>Roberto Bolaño: dishwasher, campground custodian, bellhop, garbage collector, and other low-paying jobs

God, he was so fucking based.

>> No.18633960

>>18633535
His books are a delight to read in Portuguese.

>> No.18634047

>tfw fulltime wageslave in office job while trying to write seriously
please god I want to escape this life. meanwhile garbage-mongers writing trash like 50 shades of shit and twilight make millions.

>> No.18634181

>>18633367
Houellebecq was only a programmer for a short time after his studies. By the time he published his first books, he had an admin job in the French senate.

>> No.18634267

>>18633367
Don DeLillo is probably the best example. IIRC he quit his job at 26 because he didn't want to work anymore. He just gave it up.

>I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore

>> No.18634281

>>18634181
Source?

I've read his biography and I think he found a full-time job in computer sales at the age of around 26 / 27 thanks to an old friend, and then a year or so later found a similar job at the French government doing computer repairs, basically setting up computers and so on since it was new technology at the time. His co-workers remember him as a good worker if a little distant, and he later used many of his former colleagues as characters in his books, which some were unhappy about especially since he didn't change their names.

>> No.18634420

>>18634267
Based NEET made it

>> No.18635228

*me: railway conductor and traffic coordinator

>> No.18635378

>>18634281
>which some were unhappy about especially since he didn't change their names.
Based based based.