If a Tree Falls in a Forest...Being Great versus Being Famous

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?