Post #65: Ha-ha or Ta-ta

27 Sept. 2023

“The career of writing, when successful, is certainly very pleasant; but the agonies that are endured in the search for such success are often terrible. And the author's poverty is, I think, harder to be borne than any other poverty. The man, whether rightly or wrongly, feels that the world is using him with extreme injustice. The more absolutely he fails, the higher, it is probable, he will reckon his own merits, and the keener will be the sense of injury. When unsuccessful, it is of all careers the most agonizing.”

—Antony Trollope, Autobiography

A gross exaggeration, to be sure: no, the poverty of writers is not a whit more unbearable than that of anyone else, nor are their disappointments any more bitter, or their agonies to be compared with those who have to sell themselves in all kinds of intolerable and unspeakable ways in the world, from 9 to 5 no less than in the earlier or the later hours. Nor is this a problem caused by the market, to be cured by “state funding for the arts” or any other such political shibboleth, be it in the spirit of Che Guevara or Ayn Rand. It is the human condition, and along with it, the writer’s condition too.

Our perspective gets skewed by a few glittering examples who seem to disprove the rule that life in general, and the writer’s life in particular, is about pushing boulders up a hill and watching them roll back down, again and again, all the days of our earthly existence, until we get too weak to do so anymore, and they roll over us and finish the job. Those shining success stories are simply winners in a lottery. Not all of them are writers of romance novels, crime fiction, or conspiracy-driven crowd-pleasers; some even write well; but none of them are carried to success by their talents and grit alone. There is always the imponderable element that carries them along, call it dumb luck or grace or good fortune, or whatever you wish.

What I want to add here is nothing very helpful to anyone, just a mortifying question of the type that human beings try to avoid at all cost; in this case one that every writer should ask himself occasionally, especially if he is not getting much of a hearing, namely, “Why should you presume that just because you think you have something to say, others should think so too?” Worse still, if they remain for the most part patently uninterested, what cause do you have for feeling resentful and aggrieved over your own failure to engage the crowd as you might wish? Your sense of disappointment is natural, but it hardly means that you have any cause for complaint, let alone resentment.

And this too, no less painful: considering that you don’t read many obscure authors yourself, but generally hold to the classics and the big names in literature, how could you blame others for doing the same? Why should they listen, with such a great cacophony of self-appointed creatives competing for their attention, to you, a nonentity speaking to them from nowhere? “But they listen quite readily,” the disaffected author may protest in response, “to all kinds of junk!” So they do. But who appointed you to prescribe more wholesome fare to them, when nobody is asking your opinion?

You propose yourself as the great remedy, very well. Perhaps you are right to do so, who knows. But who is to say that your offerings are in fact so much better—when the proposed beneficiaries don’t seem to think so, nor anyone else of much note? (Your own judgment does not count: the diner, not the cook, gets to pronounce on the delights of a repast.) It is understandable enough that you (the insignificant writer) are displeased; you would like to be heard and recognized, naturally, rewarded and celebrated even—who wouldn’t like a seat at the table in Stockholm, prize money, royalties, speaking fees and all? But why should so humdrum a desire give you a special claim on anyone’s attention, when there is so much competition for it by others who think and feel exactly as you do, and with as much cause, or more.

Nothing could be more banal and boring, alas, than such pointless fretting by the unsuccessful and the griping, which comes to more or less the same thing, of all those self-appointed mental giants who take themselves to be unrecognized geniuses because they can string together a paragraph or two—or worse, in our day, because they can get a bot to do it for them. If you are so very brilliant, and the tale you have to tell is of such universal interest, then should you not be able to communicate your superior insight to others? But they are ignorant swine, you answer, though perhaps not in so many words. Very well, I congratulate you on your discovery, which is not very novel, I’m afraid. Now all that is needed for you to attain real wisdom is a close look in the mirror. What do you suppose the swine see there?

So nobody seems to care much for the pearls you are casting. Such is life: either take your leave (or at least a break, before a sour notes creeps in and your gall and bitterness spoil everything with their poison) or else laugh at yourself and the vagaries of desire and ambition. Whatever meaning may or may not be found in rolling that confounded boulder up the hill again, and again, and again, such is your earthly condition, and you’d better find a way to make your peace with it if you can. It is something, as Marlow observes in Heart of Darkness, to have at least a choice of nightmares, so choose yours: Ha-ha or Ta-ta. Take your pick and pay for it.