I recall that whilst trying to live in Sydney in 1979, I had the luck, both good and bad, to bump into Tim Curnow, of Curtis Brown Literary Agency, of Paddington and The World. When I expressed to him my fortunes at both La Mama and The Pram Factory Theatre, and suggested I might do better with an older, wiser cranium, he had the Christianity to loan me one dollar.

I repaid that $1 at the 1988 Writer’s Week in Adelaide, as he was staying at my hotel; my hotel & The World’s, that is. I think he said ‘thanks’. One of the Hells of non-representation is the not-knowing of one’s fiscal worth. I suppose I’m worth one dollar, although it is definitely arguable.

My first experience of literary help is John Timlin, who is far funnier than anyone he represents, and far braver. He is the best thinker-on-his­runners I’ve yet encountered; unfortunately, we could never audit eggs together in the same struggling fowlhouse.

He teamed, albeit briefly, with Caroline Lurie, to form a clever union, and I remember once I was contributing to daily features at The Age when Caroline told John Stevens, the editor, he was a crook. Mr Stevens then plucked a basket of copy from his floor and declared ‘It’s a buyer’s market; and thanks a lot, Caroline’.

In that case I was better off unrepresented by professionals, as it was six months before Mr Stevens ran my articles. Some writers can get along with cooler minds; others just come a thud all the time, like myself.

What exactly is a work or bludge of words worth, that is the question. The AJA award for an article by a freelance is roughly three hundred and sixty dollars; but most in power pay peanuts, even less; they pay shit. The Melbourne Times pays ten dollars for an opera critique, regardless of whether the opera’s any good.

Most of the time the payment for writing is extremely emotional. When Henry Lawson waited on his long skinny arse for Contribs. payment, he smoked his bent old pipe and scratched obscene rhyming schemes on the Bulletin woodwork. Nothing’s changed, except that there’s no one like him anymore.

As both a writer and performer I have suffered the anguish of long lots of nothingness. That Jesus Christ of advances on royalties, Carillo Gantner, once sprang me twelve dollars for a work of jokes that ran ten weeks, once the real advance ran out. I shouted myself a steak and a look round.

With fiction or phone book, the advances are nearly always right down there with overtime for blind proof-readers. If I lived in Utopia, or South Yarra, and knew someone wise and kind and full of genius, I’d sign up straight away. As it is I am impossible, know it, and just bash away.

We live, I believe, in meagre and flint-hard times; perhaps it has always been like this, but in near­living memory, I cannot recall worse times. You are screened from editors by shock therapy recipients. The bosses of publishing houses cannot be got; except for Brian Johns, who once liked an idea of mine, and the contract was in the hands of Ernie my Postman in four working days.

The ABC, The Age, The Herald; anyone you can work for, all elevate Ebeneezer Scrooge to the position of deity. When you go crook that the dough is shithouse, they shrug and agree; and some of them actually shrug and agree in cold treacle slow motion. It’s hard.

Philosophically and socially speaking it is of course best to have someone represent you, even if they resent you for being an artist in this awkward continent. How many painters and writers have been dudded since Caxton hit the scene? Nearly every one of ‘em.

I am the writer of several popular plays that have been money-spinners. My play The Death of Minnie has been presented in London three times. It has also died in Perth, but that was meant to be. It has been presented at the Edinburgh Festival. It has also been ignored in Melbourne and Sydney. It is still good. A good agent would breathe life into it again. Where are they?

Truth is the publicists are the artists; the real ones who arrogantly and sometimes humbly pen the scripts are the duffers who just get in the way of crisp, straightforward financial return; artistic return for the silvertails who draw the pay out of our chests.

A painter who cannot speak well must these hard-to-get-onto days present a series of coloured slides if he is after a bob to keep mixing the turps with the students’ quality oils. What if he or she cannot afford it? Who in the government will look at the work? Who will embarrass themselves by . peering into unlit dog kennels of night?

There are many favours done, it never ends. Why is Vic O’Connor ignored by the establishment press? Why has Noel Counihan never had a show at Heide?

I had a van, rough van, last year. It cost me six hundred and seventy dollars. I liked its rough and sliding doors. I liked to write commercial copy and hand deliver it. Perhaps when I had the van, I was free from corrupt representation?

What does the personality matter? If the text is beautiful why can’t the payment be instant? Unfortunately the arts are controlled by a frantic network of highly paid misunderstanders. As Dylan Thomas once remarked over a whisky, there are the understanders and the scoffers. I scoff at understanding.