Hack Writer - History

History

The term "hack writer" was first used in the 18th century, "when publishing was establishing itself as a business employing writers who could produce to order." The derivation of the term "hack" was a "shortening of hackney, which described a horse that was easy to ride and available for hire." In 1728, Alexander Pope wrote The Dunciad, which was a satire of "the Grub-street Race" of commercial writers who worked in Grub Street, a London district that was home to a bohemian counterculture of impoverished writers and poets. In the late 19th century, Anthony Trollope's novel The Way We Live Now (1875) depicts a female hack writer whose career was built on social connections rather than writing skill.

Many authors who would later become famous worked as low-paid hack writers early in their careers, or during a downturn in their fortunes. As a young man, Anton Chekhov had to support his family by writing short newspaper articles; Arthur Koestler penned a dubious Dictionary of Sexuality for the popular press; Samuel Beckett translated for the French Reader's Digest; and William Faulkner churned out Hollywood scripts.

A number of films have depicted hack writers, perhaps because the way these authors are "prostituting" their creative talents makes them an interesting character study. In the film adaptation of Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), author Graham Greene added a hard-drinking hack writer named Holly Martins. In Jean-Luc Godard's film Contempt (1964), a hack screenwriter is paid to doctor a script. In the 2002 film Adaptation., Nicolas Cage depicts an ill-educated character named Donald Kaufman who finds he has a knack for churning out cliché-filled movie scripts.