Back to Work

I go to work today as a science writer for a university here in Houston. For four and a half years I have worked as a freelance writer, mostly in the areas of science and medicine. Freelancing offers the solace of self-employment in exchange for the anxiety of irregular paychecks. As James Marcus at House of Mirth wrote to me last week, “Alas, there are no listings for Man of Letters in the employment section.”

I'm uncertain what impact fulltime employment will have on Anecdotal Evidence, except to say I plan to continue posting daily. The posts may become shorter and some days they may resort to the form of a commonplace book drawn from my reading, depending on available time and energy. Along with the more conventional benefits, I will also have unlimited access to a first-rate university library. On the subject of work, here is “Toads,” by Philip Larkin, who worked most of his life as a university librarian:

“Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

“Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison –
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

“Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts –
They don't end as paupers;

“Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines –
They seem to like it.

“Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets -- and yet
No one actually starves.

“Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

“For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

“And will never allow me to blarney
My way to getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

“I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you love both.”