"Now I am a writer who can command fairly good payments from magazines with large circulations, I very often refuse to write for them and still write sometimes for small magazines for nothing"
About this Quote
There is a quiet provocation in Woodcock admitting he can finally “command fairly good payments” and then choosing, often, to say no. The line plays like a modest confession, but its real force is a refusal of the normal bargain: success buys you access, and access is supposed to buy you obedience. He’s signaling that professional legitimacy is not the same thing as artistic freedom - and that money, once it arrives, can be as coercive as poverty.
The syntax matters. He doesn’t posture as a martyr; he “very often refuse[s]” and “still write[s] sometimes,” a rhythm that suggests practiced, ongoing choices rather than a single dramatic stand. The mention of “magazines with large circulations” is pointed: mass reach can mean mass expectations, editorial smoothing, safe topics, the subtle pressure to become a reliable brand. By contrast, “small magazines” carry an old modernist aura of experiment, argument, and community - places where the currency isn’t cash but conversation, influence, and integrity.
Contextually, Woodcock’s career sits in a mid-century print ecosystem where magazines were gatekeepers of both income and cultural prestige. As a writer associated with anarchist and anti-authoritarian currents, his stance reads less like bohemian romanticism than a political ethic: decentralize power, resist capture, keep allegiance to ideas rather than institutions. Writing “for nothing” isn’t self-erasure; it’s patronage reversed - the writer subsidizing the public sphere he actually wants to exist.
The syntax matters. He doesn’t posture as a martyr; he “very often refuse[s]” and “still write[s] sometimes,” a rhythm that suggests practiced, ongoing choices rather than a single dramatic stand. The mention of “magazines with large circulations” is pointed: mass reach can mean mass expectations, editorial smoothing, safe topics, the subtle pressure to become a reliable brand. By contrast, “small magazines” carry an old modernist aura of experiment, argument, and community - places where the currency isn’t cash but conversation, influence, and integrity.
Contextually, Woodcock’s career sits in a mid-century print ecosystem where magazines were gatekeepers of both income and cultural prestige. As a writer associated with anarchist and anti-authoritarian currents, his stance reads less like bohemian romanticism than a political ethic: decentralize power, resist capture, keep allegiance to ideas rather than institutions. Writing “for nothing” isn’t self-erasure; it’s patronage reversed - the writer subsidizing the public sphere he actually wants to exist.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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