Chekhov's Mistress
Borges Responds to the CJR Article on the Difficulties of Publishing
I first saw reference to the CJR article at Maud’s where Stacey Sullivan’s misadventures in publishing were chronicled. Soon after, Maud posted related comments from Terry Teachout and editor Duncan Murrel. I quote Maud, quoting Teachout:
Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business.
Pointed and right on, in my opinion.
This exchange reminded me of a similar story at Salon, “Confessions of a Semi-Successful Author” (access my require subscription or registration). That article drew a great deal of attention with miles of letters to the editors. I began to wonder if this is a new phenomenon of the new age of publishing, or has it always been just an ineluctable element of the life of the writer.
So to reflect on the matter, I did some channeling to the old wise owl, Jorge Luis Borges, and he said:
“When I printed my first book I didn’t send it to the bookshops, or to other writers, just gave copies away to friends- some three hundred copies I gave away to friends. They were not on sale. But of course, in those days nobody thought about a writer being famous, or failure or success. Those ideas were alien to us about 1920, 1930. Noboby thought in terms of failure or success in selling books. We thought of writing as, I would say as a pastime, or as a kind of destiny. And when I read DeQuincey’s Autobiography, I found out that he always knew that his life would be a literary life, and Milton also, and Coleridge also, I think. They knew it all the time. They knew their lives would be given over to literature, for reading and for writing, which, of course, go together.”
Read widely, think well, and write often.
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: September 10, 2004
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
