encourage people to write for too little. It’s a splendid life when you think of its emoluments, but it can be death to the soul if you are not good at it.
Let me keep my promise, then, and go on a little about the negative part of being a writer. To skip at one bound over all those fascinating and relatively happy years when one is an apprentice writer and learning every day, at least on good days, there is in contrast the more or less constant pressure on the life of the professional novelist. For soon after you finish each hard-earned book, the reviews come in and the reviews are murderous. Contrast an author’s reception to an actor’s. With the notable exception of John Simon, theater critics do not often try to kill performers. I believe there is an unspoken agreement that thespians deserve to be protected against the perils of first nights. After all, the actor is daring a rejection that can prove as fearful as a major wound. For sensitive human beings like actors, a hole in the ego can be worse than a hole in the heart. Such moderation does not carry over, however, into literary criticism.
Meretricious, dishonest, labored, loathsome, pedestrian, hopeless, disgusting, disappointing, raunchy, ill-wrought, boring
—these are not uncommon words for a bad review. You would be hard put to find another professional field where criticism is equally savage. Accountants, lawyers, engineers, and doctors do not often speak publicly in this manner.
Yet the unhappiest thing to say is that our critical practice may even be fair, harsh but fair. After all, one prepares a book in the safety of the study and nothing short of your self-esteem, your bills, or your editor is forcing you to show your stuff. You put your book out, if you can afford to take the time, only when it is ready. If economic necessity forces you to write somewhat faster than is good for you—well, everybody has his sad story. As a practical matter, not that much has to be written into the teeth of a gale and few notes need be taken on the face of a cliff. An author usually does his stint at the desk, feeling not too hungryand suffering no pains greater than the view of his empty pad of paper. Now, granted, that white sheet can look as blank as a television screen when the program is off the air, but that is not a danger, merely a deadening presence. The writer, unlike more active creative artists, works in no immediate peril. Why should not the open season begin so soon as the work comes out? If talented authors were to have it better than actors in all ways, there would be a tendency for actors to disappear and talented authors to multiply, so the critics keep our numbers down.
In fact, not too many good writers remain productive through the decades. There are too many other hazards as well. We are jerked by the media in and out of fashion, and each drop from popularity can feel like a termination to your career. Such insecurity is no help to morale, for even in the best periods every writer always knows one little terror:
Does it stop tomorrow? Does it all stop tomorrow?
Writing is spooky. There is no routine of an office to keep you going, only the blank page each morning, and you never know where your words are coming from, those divine words. So your professionalism at best is fragile. You cannot always tell yourself that fashions pass and history will smile at you again. In the literary world, it is not easy to acquire the stoicism to endure, especially if you’ve begun as a vulnerable adolescent. It is not even automatic to pray for luck if it has been pessimism itself which gave force to your early themes. Maybe it is no more than blind will, but some authors stay at it. Over and over they keep writing a new book and do it in the knowledge that upon its publication they will probably be savaged and will not be able to fight back. An occasional critic can be singled out for counterattack, or one can always write a letter to the editor of the book
Let me keep my promise, then, and go on a little about the negative part of being a writer. To skip at one bound over all those fascinating and relatively happy years when one is an apprentice writer and learning every day, at least on good days, there is in contrast the more or less constant pressure on the life of the professional novelist. For soon after you finish each hard-earned book, the reviews come in and the reviews are murderous. Contrast an author’s reception to an actor’s. With the notable exception of John Simon, theater critics do not often try to kill performers. I believe there is an unspoken agreement that thespians deserve to be protected against the perils of first nights. After all, the actor is daring a rejection that can prove as fearful as a major wound. For sensitive human beings like actors, a hole in the ego can be worse than a hole in the heart. Such moderation does not carry over, however, into literary criticism.
Meretricious, dishonest, labored, loathsome, pedestrian, hopeless, disgusting, disappointing, raunchy, ill-wrought, boring
—these are not uncommon words for a bad review. You would be hard put to find another professional field where criticism is equally savage. Accountants, lawyers, engineers, and doctors do not often speak publicly in this manner.
Yet the unhappiest thing to say is that our critical practice may even be fair, harsh but fair. After all, one prepares a book in the safety of the study and nothing short of your self-esteem, your bills, or your editor is forcing you to show your stuff. You put your book out, if you can afford to take the time, only when it is ready. If economic necessity forces you to write somewhat faster than is good for you—well, everybody has his sad story. As a practical matter, not that much has to be written into the teeth of a gale and few notes need be taken on the face of a cliff. An author usually does his stint at the desk, feeling not too hungryand suffering no pains greater than the view of his empty pad of paper. Now, granted, that white sheet can look as blank as a television screen when the program is off the air, but that is not a danger, merely a deadening presence. The writer, unlike more active creative artists, works in no immediate peril. Why should not the open season begin so soon as the work comes out? If talented authors were to have it better than actors in all ways, there would be a tendency for actors to disappear and talented authors to multiply, so the critics keep our numbers down.
In fact, not too many good writers remain productive through the decades. There are too many other hazards as well. We are jerked by the media in and out of fashion, and each drop from popularity can feel like a termination to your career. Such insecurity is no help to morale, for even in the best periods every writer always knows one little terror:
Does it stop tomorrow? Does it all stop tomorrow?
Writing is spooky. There is no routine of an office to keep you going, only the blank page each morning, and you never know where your words are coming from, those divine words. So your professionalism at best is fragile. You cannot always tell yourself that fashions pass and history will smile at you again. In the literary world, it is not easy to acquire the stoicism to endure, especially if you’ve begun as a vulnerable adolescent. It is not even automatic to pray for luck if it has been pessimism itself which gave force to your early themes. Maybe it is no more than blind will, but some authors stay at it. Over and over they keep writing a new book and do it in the knowledge that upon its publication they will probably be savaged and will not be able to fight back. An occasional critic can be singled out for counterattack, or one can always write a letter to the editor of the book
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