The New York Observer's Gillian Reagan explores how book deals have "ruined the lives" of several writers. I don't know that I entirely buy this whole premise - that book deals have ruined them financially, emotionally and otherwise. Don't get me wrong - I completely understand the large advance that quickly becomes a problem when the first book doesn't earn it back and then the author tries to sell a second book. I get that. I also get that there are taxes to pay, rights to secure, agents to divvy it all up with.
Yet Reagan's article spends a lot of time focusing on the loneliness and isolation of the writing life. The difficulty with being alone for so long. The lack of outside deadlines, the coffee chatter with co-workers about last night's Sopranos episode. The weight gain from mounting publishing deadline pressures. And so on. It strikes me as a little odd that writers of any stripe aren't familiar with the isolation of writing - with being home alone for days at a time, never speaking to anyone. It also seems that Reagan has cobbled together some extreme cases in the likes of Nathan Englander, Leah McLaren, Rachel Sklar, Jessica Cutler and Daniel Smith. I've met many well-adjusted writers who work alone all day but then go back out into the world. Many who see their job as any other job - work. Damn hard work. Some days it is exhilarating, some days it is downright awful. I don't know any writers who think it will be a walk in the park. But you do the work. Period.
Englander's ten year absence from society to write The Ministry of Special Cases reminds me of Kiran Desai's eight year absence from the world to write The Inheritance of Loss. No one is forcing them to take this long. How long a book "takes" seems as unique and varied as the person writing it. It depends. It depends on a lot of things. It seems odd to me that we should feel pity - or even awe - about the duress they placed themselves under. We should marvel at the results. In both cases...wow. Divine books. But should we marvel at the process and the duration of it? I'm not sure.
There's also something amiss - at least for me - when someone who has taken a year off from blogging to write a book and then is too tired to promote it a year later is compared alongside someone like Englander who quite clearly is in a different realm altogether. A different quality of writing, if you will. The comparison is weak at best.
I need to get my Desai reading notes together because she spoke at length about this isolation, about a complete fear of being out in the world, of not knowing how to act in the world, etc. I remember wondering how a writer could capture the world if that writer was no longer living in it. At the time, it rankled me and I couldn't put my finger on why. Now, I'm re-rankled. Time to examine why that is and do a proper post, rather than riffing off an Observer piece that didn't ring entirely true for me.
There are, however, a few money quotes that any writer can relate to. This one is particularly spot-on:
“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”
Ah, yes. We've all had a bite from the shit-then-genius sandwich, haven't we?
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