Some people deserve their
fame: Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, Van Gogh. Some don’t: Snookie, Honey boo-boo,
Danielle Steele. Some deserve fame and don’t have it: There are probably
countless examples, but of course, I don’t know any, except Theresa Williams.
There’s a little book,
called The Secret of Hurricanes, published in 2002. This book is written with
all the poetry and humanity of Marilyn Robinson’s Gilead, and all the violence,
heartbreak and brutal truth of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, yet it has
received no Pulitzer prize; Oprah has not held the hand of its author, gushed
her praises and then sent forth multitudes of women to buy and read the book.
In fact, its cover is clean of any little symbol of earthly acclaim, no Booker
Prize, no Pen/Faulkner award, no New York Times bestseller, not even a stinking
little Barnes and Noble Book club pick. It could easily merit a Pulitzer, but
instead it got nothing. Why? Why do some writers get fame and prizes and
others, who have demonstrated equal or even more talent go unnoticed? Well, the
answers are obvious: better connections, better agents or publishing houses, or
even just dumb ole, right-place-right-time, luck.
Maybe it’s an American
thing, maybe it’s a youth thing, but I have this unquestioned assumption that
accomplishment automatically equals recognition, that if I were to write a
brilliant, breathtaking novel, a true opus, that immediately the clarion call
would go out, the laurel branches and fine robes would appear, and an honorary
doctorate from Harvard would just be a matter of course. Yet, it is entirely
possible, and I dare say more likely than not, that absolutely nothing would
happen. As an artist, I think it’s important to face this possibility, to ask
myself, do I want to be a great writer or do I want to be a famous writer?
I think it’s ok to for an
artist to admit that she would be wounded to have her best ignored. Van Gogh
felt immense pain at the rejection of his work. In some ways, I think it
weighed on him so heavily that it slowly, slowly killed him. And it’s not just
about fame, wanting the laurel wreathes, and royalties and interviews on the
radio. It’s also about wanting your love reciprocated. I believe that a true
artist makes something out of the ecstasy of love that human existence provokes
in him, and all he wants is to share that ecstasy with his beloved, to let it
multiply between them like children. To have the world completely ignore that
offering is like the pain of having love letters returned to you, your beloved cold,
indifferent, unmoved. It’s not wrong to be hurt by that. I’d say it’s
impossible not to be hurt by that, if your love was true. So I guess the
question is not do you want to be great or famous? But will you go on, will it
still be worth it to you if you are great and not famous, great and unknown?
Will it have been better to love and yet be unloved than never to have loved at
all? Were and are those love letters, nevertheless, worth writing?
