A Dangerous Profession: A Book about the Writing Life

I have been reading Fred Busch for over twenty years, but he practiced his craft of writing for nearly twice that long. I kept hoping for a memoir from Busch, as I always do from writers I admire, but he died in 2006, so this book will have to suffice. And A Dangerous Profession does not disappoint. It is worth the cover price for just three pieces alone, the ones which are the most autobiographical. In the first, "My Father's War", Busch tries mightily to understand more about his father's inner life by examining and speculating on what might have been implied "between the lines" of terse entries found in a small pocket journal that the senior Busch carried throughout his WWII years. Busch also here remembers his grandparents, "old country" folk. Two others, "The Writer's Wife" and "The Floating Christmas Tree", look at his marriage from the early days to more contemporary times. To his description of the lean early days of their marriage I could immediately relate: "We had seven dollars each week for food. Our rent was eighty-four dollars." As I remember, my wife and I budgeted five dollars for food and our rent was seventy-five dollars. I read passages from these essays aloud to my wife, who snorted and chuckled in recognition of those lean early days. There continue to be hints and glimpses of the kind of man Fred Busch was in the other fine essays in the book - about other writers, people as diverse as Melville (an obvious favorite, who even became a main character in Busch's The Night Inspector), Kafka, John O'Hara, Graham Greene, Hemingway, and a couple writers I'd never heard of: Terrence des Pres and Leslie Epstein, who obviously have written eloquently of the Jewish experience. Busch, who calls himself a "secular Jew," was a friend and colleague of des Pres, and mourns the man's early accidental death. Busch tells of how he once peeked into a notebook des Pres was using and found the phrase: "Stories, first of all, store time." Later he tells of how badly he misses his friend, and how he wept because they could never talk again. When Fred Busch died, I read of it in the newspapers. I never met the man, but I felt such a sense of loss that I nearly wept, but I didn't. Instead I wrote a letter to his widow, telling her how much his writing had meant to me. She didn't know me, and I don't know if she got my letter, but I felt better. "Stories store time," his friend once noted. Fred Busch's stories - his life stored in carefully crafted words, phrases, sentences - will live a long time. This is a wonderful book; a tribute not just to the writing profession, but to the importance of language itself. - Tim Bazzett, author of the Reed City Boy trilogy

The very title is a challenge. "A Dangerous Profession." About writing? What's so dangerous? Suffocation by towers of manuscripts? Rejection of your work by editors? Paper cuts? Who does Frederick Busch think he is; Richard Branson? No, what this university author's talking about in this collection of pieces are those writers who take risks with their works. Not to write the next potboiling, page-turning best-seller, but something more lasting and more personal. These are writers who live out their lives according to a sort of literary DNA, doing what they must at whatever cost to themselves. There's Herman Melville, who felt himself finished at age 33 because the book he believed in, "Moby Dick," had earned him "the scorn of reviewers -- they questioned his sanity as well as his skill -- and, by the end of his life, a total of $157." There's Graham Greene's exquisite career writing about how we betray love, loyalty, ourselves. Or, as Busch puts it: "follies were his subject matter, finally -- how, in love, we betray the beloved; how, worshiping God, or a god, or a hope of one, we betray that hope or wish; how, striving to do good, we cause damage." There's Charles Dickens, whose "David Copperfield" is nothing less than a novel about writing and the power of the written and spoken word can hold over its audience. The novel is also a reflection of the man himself, who carried on stage readings of his works that would leave him exhausted and probably hastened his end. That's writing capable of killing. But Busch doesn't sustain the promise implied by the title, so the book's not a dirge. He leavens it by including essays on bad popular writing and bad literary criticism, memoirs recalling his early literary career, and a short humorous look at the writer's life from the point of view of the (usually) long-suffering wife. It's tough to explain to someone who doesn't write why putting words on paper can be so difficult, why writers can turn into divas in their self-absorption and why those who work so hard to become so good seem capable of sacrificing so much. Busch's look at the writing life reminds us why it is so.

You should read this book if you are a beginning writer who wants assurance that others too have written and been rejected over and over again. IF you think you would like to be a novelist to have glamour, fame, and fortune, than read on so that you can persuade yourself to go into another line of work. Frederick Busch knows about the dangers of writing, he is a best selling author of more than twenty works of fiction and non- fiction, but you do not see him on nightly TV. Busch examines what makes him and the writers that he admires including Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Ernest Hemingway continue to write in the darkest hours. The reason is simply to share stories. Busch is the writer of the sixteen essays that are in the book. If a writer is honest with himself, he hopes that what he writes will be interesting to the readers. Called a Notable book of 1998 by the New York Times, A Dangerous Profession will captivate writers and readers alike, inspiring them to pick up books that they would not normally want to read, which has been the case with me. I would recommend this book to any one who likes to read.

You could'nt ask for a more rewarding book to read period.It just happens to be about writers and writing and the the serious craft it is for some and the tough devotion they have to it and how it is life itself and even death for a few.Mr.Busch takes you down to unheard of depths of skills brilliant writers mull in their heads before commiting to paper.A fine,fine book.

If you care about writing, if you care about reading, if you want to be exposed to the mind of a man of warmth and exceptional writing talent, than this is a book for you. Frederick Busch will take you on a journey into the mind of one writer: Frederick Busch. He will recount parts of his life with honesty. You will feel comfortable with this very human being. Whether he is writing about his father and his farther's war or his is disecting his own and the writing of others, this book is a treasure of technique, passion, disappointment and love. Read it.