Would You Rather? The Writer’s Edition

Posted by David Duhr in Inspiration      21 comments

Oct
25

Last week we had a wonderful, and wonderfully morbid, discussion about what book you would read on your deathbed.The answers were deliciously wide-ranging, from childhood favorites to various Shakespeare offerings, from books that don’t exist to books the respondent wrote him/herself. Our thanks to all of you who participated.

(By the way, it’s never too late to join the deathbed discussion, or any other — our comments stay open 24/7/364, knocking off the equivalent of one day per year when our server shits the bed.)

But wait, don’t climb out of your imaginary deathbed just yet!

Two of you chose The Great Gatsby, and it got me thinking about how at the time of his death, Fitzgerald considered himself a hack and a failure, never imagining that one day Gatsby would be a staple in classrooms around the world and considered by millions(?) the Great American Novel.

Your turn #1: Fitzgerald, hack or genius? Is there a hack whose work you can’t resist, sort of a literary guilty pleasure? Do you wish we’d stop writing about death? Let us know below, and don’t forget to tick “Notify” to see responses to your comments.

Who in the F*ck is Richard Eberhart?

This topic, art and posterity, has been on my mind ever since my pal Drew Nellins Smith published a great piece at Electric Literature, “You’ll Fete Me When I’m Gone.” (Faithful readers will remember Drew from our interview at Electric Lit and from this post about accountability.)

Drew is resigned to (what he considers) the inevitability that his debut novel, Arcade, and likely all of his future output, will never draw much critical or popular acclaim and that he’ll die in good old-fashioned writerly obscurity. Such cheeriness is the main reason we’re friends.

In his essay, Drew comforts himself with the idea that, one day far into the future, his work will find a wide audience and become prominent like Fitzgerald’s. He cites examples such as Melville, Lovecraft, the now ubiquitous John Williams, and crime novelist Jim Thompson, who from his deathbed said to his wife, “I’ll become famous after I’m dead about ten years,” and was correct.

Cold comfort, that, but whatever helps.

Drew also cites an opposite example, a poet named Richard Eberhart who was well-known in his time, won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, and whose name I’d never even heard of until now. I’m guessing many of you can say the same.

Would You Rather?

So I asked Drew — and I now put to you the same question — Would you rather die in obscurity but one day have your work as widely read and admired as Fitzgerald’s, or would you rather, like Eberhart, be loved in your lifetime but then be almost totally forgotten?

I’m willing to bet that most of us would rather taste the fruits of our labor than be dead when those fruits ripen. But maybe not! I’m very curious to hear your responses.

For the record, Drew dodged the question, though I’m hoping he may change his mind and join this discussion.

Your turn #2: The question above, of course! Would you rather die in obscurity but one day have your work become famous, or be famous in your day and then forever forgotten?

Bonus: Our three favorite answers will win the respondent a free copy of Drew’s book. So make it good!

Churn, Churn, Churn

Of course, having your work recognized in this era is arguably more difficult than it’s ever been before. More books are published annually than ever before, and a staggering majority are lost in the flow as soon as they’re released. “Churn, churn, churn goes the culture,” Drew wrote in an earlier draft of the essay.

I’ve never published a book, but I imagine I’d be devastated if years of my hard work disappeared as soon as I dropped it into this raging torrent of output.

Or would I? Perhaps it would bring me enough satisfaction just to have added my piece to that flow. And anyway, isn’t process more important than product? (Wrong?)

For me, for now, I’d rather be Richard Eberhart. He’s obscure now — Drew even misspelled his name and no EL editor caught it — but he died (I hope!) believing that his work meant a great deal to his contemporaries. If my writing is meaningless to future generations, so be it. Their loss. Or, at least, nobody’s loss. Certainly not mine.

Your turn #3: Is process more important than product, or is product more important than process? Why?

A Writer’s Real Job

Drew ends his piece on an upbeat note… sort of. “The real job of the writer, photographer, painter, or filmmaker is simply to create work that arises from one’s singular perspective, then to launch that work into the flow of culture,” he writes. “Freeing one’s self from present day appraisals means that there is no failure, only the potential for delayed gratification — understanding that the delay will likely extend to some time after your death.”

In other words, get your work out there, and try not to care how it will be received by your contemporaries. (Now that is a philosophy we can get behind!)

Or, to let Drew have the final word, “The only real failure in art is to fail to produce it.”

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is copy editor and fiction editor at the Texas Observer and contributes to the Dallas Morning News, Publishing Perspectives, and others.

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