Robert Fulford grows up as a son of a newspaper man. He ends up being a newspaper man himself. But one of the more famous Canadian ones. His attitudes and personality shine through in every chapter, partly the effect, I think, of writing thousands of words a month, and, according to his estimate, millions of words by this point (writing in the late 1980s).
I relished reading his comments on Margaret Atwood. It would take somebody as smart as Fulford to say anything to knock Margaret Atwood off of her lofty perch. Until today, I thought she was well nigh invincible. Not any more.
I always am in awe of anyone who pulls together the money to start any business from scratch, be it a restaurant, a magazine, a rock band, whatever. When I read about Saturday Night, the magazine that Fulford worked for for 19 years, it is scary. All of the people that kept pouring money in it thought it would have a miraculous rebirth into a money-making enterprise. Alas, false hope.
This just reinforces my image even more of the hack, not a perjorative term, but a lovingly respectful admiration (tinged with envy--actually gushing with lots of envy) of those rare people who can churn out paragraphs on demand (knowing the deadline is today by 5:30 p.m., for example), and pull something together when there is not the luxury of being able to revise for three or eight days, or 2 years, or half a lifetime, like writers in some other forms do.