Once an aphorism has been quoted enough times, people assume it contains a germ of truth. For example, Samuel Johnson once said, "No one but a blockhead ever writes, except for money."; There is not even a germ of truth in that declaration. Let me offer proof.

It is generally conceded that the finest form of writing is poetry. Have you ever read anything to touch Dover Beach? Or The Blessed Damozel. How much do you suppose these compositions netted for their poor blockhead authors?

The fact is, if a poet wrote in anticipation of getting rich from his writings he would indeed be a blockhead. But he doesn't. The poet writes because he is driven by an insatiable need to speak his heart to the world.

These days, writing for hire, has become increasingly common. Every magazine likes to have a stable of tame writers they can call upon to cook up a piece on whatever their market research tells them is likely to sell future issues of their magazine.

Writers learn to fall in with this. They do their own market research and write proposals, not because they are particularly interested in the subject, but because they believe they can sell the piece. This is hardly speaking one's heart to the world is it? There is no place where the absence of heart is more obvious than in the prose of such writers produce.

The same dynamic operates in book publishing. The trick with non-fiction, is to pick a newsworthy topic and get in fast. You have to be fast, because the publisher reads the news too, and chances are he is already talking to one of his gelded scribes about exactly that topic.

The situation with novels is really quite ludicrous. Publishers look upon novels as cans of beans to be hyped and marketed for six weeks, fingers crossed that this, their latest ticket in the best-seller lottery, with prove a winner. Most books don't, but you only need the occasional winner to get in the black.

Novel publisher maintain stables of writers too. "How I would like a stall in that stable,"; young writers exclaim. By the time they discover the cost involves checking their cojones with the top stable hand, it's too late.

A new young writer has a much better chance getting into the stable than a new one regardless of the quality of product they have to sell. Why? Again it's marketing.

Suppose you are publisher. You get a young, reasonably competent writer, publish his first book to moderate sales, and option his next two. Now, you redirect your marketing strategy to sell the writer, not his books. You teach him how to behave on TV so that he gives an amusing interview, call in a few of your markers from the magazine buddies, and voila, instead of an author you have a personality. In time almost anything your writer puts into his next can of beans will get you into the black. And, if you do a little market research and steer him a little, you can increase your odds even more.

Hire an old writer and he's going to die before you have his persona properly fashioned.

Back to our young writer. What happens to him? It is in the nature of life to become what you do. Lie often enough and you become a liar. So the young writer becomes what he does. He stops being a person and becomes a personality. Persons write books, not personalities. If that had happened to Van Gogh he might well have become the most successful illustrator of his era. He would never have painted his Irises, of his Sunflower.

But don't worry about literature. It never dies, it just finds another way. Right now, the mechanics of publishing has become so much simpler than they used to be, small presses are springing up everywhere. Very few of them, you'll notice, are interested in publishing cans of beans.

No! Samuel Johnson was dead wrong. What he should have said was, "Writers who write only for money eventually become literary blockheads."; Now there's a piece of truth worth quoting.