Fear and Fame

Why do so many people, even non-readers, have such a high regard for authors? Why is there such uncritical reverence for the published writer? Why does publishing something, even online, make a person into an object of admiration?

These are some of the interesting questions Tim Parks asks in a recent article.  I found it earlier this month just after giving a talk on Hemingway to a group of 25 people, all of them familiar with the Hemingway legend but few of them readers of his work. Even non-readers have literary heroes, it seems.

The same week, my wife, Lynn, published more of her fiction on Amazon Kindle, and the reaction to this news, even among those who have intention of downloading these stories, is usually one of excited awe, as if she were now some minor celebrity.

Parks teaches creative writing on occasion and finds among his students the same eagerness to publish than I have found in some of my students.  They see the only real validation of their work as having it accepted in some format so that it's "out there" so that they are, presumably, no longer anonymous nothings.  They are not willing to wait until the story or article or poem is ready; this may take months, even years.  Yet most of these emerging writers are impatient.

We live in a culture of celebrity, where winning is everything even though this motive is rarely acknowledged by most writers.  The fear of being unrecognized seems to be at work here, the fear of being ignored, the fear of personal failure if the piece of writing we dash off one week is not soon being applauded by readers.

Fame is a devouring monster. Leo Braudy, in his fine book The Frenzy of Renown, sketches the role of fame in some of the great writers and its cultural interplay with the realization that all earthly fame is fleeting: today's Hollywood celebrity is tomorrow's has-been. Yet something in most of us seeks at least fifteen minutes of fame.

I remember my then 9-year-old nephew asking me, "Are you famous?" when he saw my books listed on Amazon.  I assured him that I was not and never will be famous; that I did not seek fame, though I was pleased that much of my hard work was rewarded. Much of this publication was expected by the university where I taught; but my non-academic writing, including this blog, is not produced primarily to attract attention to myself. If I can reach a handful of readers who find something I say interesting, I am richly rewarded; if I have no readers at all, the process of having written is deeply satisfying. Too many writers do not enjoy the process.

Parks worries about his ambitious students, who (like many people I have known) rush into publication before they are ready.  They will neglect the patient thought and revision needed to make a text really satisfying in an effort to make it commercially viable. The motive: not money so much as fame, the reward, apparently, for the nagging need we have for reassurance that we are important in and of ourselves.

Parks finds low self-esteem at work; I would add fear, which is even more basic and underlies so much.

Yearning for Silence

Tim Parks, an Englishman living in Italy, is an interesting writer whose books about Italian culture I have enjoyed.  A recent piece of his in Aeon magazine, however, struck me as missing the mark a bit, although, being about his personal spiritual quest, Who am I to judge? (as someone else recently asked)

His topic is the yearning for silence, a topic of great importance to me. He says we fear silence and long for it at the same time because it involves the end of the self. Huh?

Well, Parks, having no religious experience with prayer and with only a 10-day Buddhist retreat under his belt, finds that a discussion of silence involves consciousness and selfhood, with which I agree; but it also involves, he says, "the desire to invest in the self and the desire for the end of the self." But it's more than Self!

His Vipassana experience taught him that "our excessive interest in our own wordy thoughts" can dissolve as language melts away during the meditative breathing but that meditative "techniques" return us to the noisy self, the busy mind, something most people understandably long to escape from. And he learned what most beginners know: that silence and stillness are related.

Parks does not seem aware that he is on the edge of the ancient mystical tradition of contemplative prayer, the practice of the presence of God in silence.  Whether or not this is a technique or not, it is lifelong pursuit (for monastics and laypeople alike) of the union of the self with God in which the self falls away; but this is not a loss but a fullness of experience.

The experience of God-with-us-now in the present moment is a loss of the self-conscious self but also a discovery, according to Thomas Merton, of the true self, the one known by God, who dwells within at the center of our being.

I hope Parks looks more deeply into silence and practices it regularly, that he reads Merton and Thomas Keating, John Main, and others like him in the Christian tradition. Their work is richer than the essentially secular and limited approach he has outlined in which the fear of death and the loss of the self becomes the result of silent meditation.

I want to tell him: What seems to be lost in the darkness of silence is the self, but that is only the first step on the mystical path that can't be clearly explained, even by great poets like John of the Cross or T. S. Eliot, except to say it involves finding the true self in the love of God. 

That may not make any sense to some readers, and I am not sure I understand it myself. That's why we call it a mystery, the kind without a solution or answer.

Readin' & Writin'

Last night, at a literary salon I listened as members of a large reading club announced the names of the books they had recently completed.  Being a guest, I did not participate but wondered to myself what book(s) I would talk about if given a chance.

I have mentioned quite a few books on this blog, some that I never finished, others than intrigued me or raised interesting questions. I tend toward non-fiction, but I have over the past year encountered several novels worth mentioning: 

Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall --a consistently absorbing story by a master stylist and major American writer

T. C. Boyle's The Women--entertaining not only because of the women in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright but because of the author's lively, hilarious writing

And Deaf Sentence by David Lodge, a comic master from Britain.
I tend to stay with novels with interesting prose style. I copy sentences I admire and share them with my students. I remind them (ad nauseam, I'm sure) that they can't possibly write if they don't read, read, read good stuff.

The other books I have enjoyed include A Brief History of the Smile by the art historian Angus Trumble (fascinating microhistory of painting, done with brio)
  Christopher Jamison's Finding Sanctuary--a monastic guide to everyday living (for those who are spiritual and prayerful)
  Two books on the Dissolution of the monasteries in 16th cent. England under Henry VIII--one by Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Last Divine Office, the other The King's Reformation by Bernard (more information than most readers need).

I would strongly recommend Happiness: A History by McMahon as an important, clear study of the way our Western ideas of happiness have changed over the centuries.

Tim Parks has a fine book on the origins of modern banking, Medici Money, which reminds me of the arguable truism (by Carlyle?) that history is essentially biography. He handles the topic with the flair that Brits pull off well.

I see Descartes' Bones on my shelf, but since I didn't finish it and can't remember anything about it, I won't mention it--except to say it has a great title. (The philosopher's bones did get carted around Europe a bit, but that's not the point of the book; still,it gives me a great idea for another book on the way famous artists' and authors' remains have been dug up, fought over, moved, and re-buried.)

I did a review for America of the remarkable memoir by Stephanie Saldana, The Bread of Angels--her story of going alone to Syria in 2004 to learn Arabic and all that she discovered about herself.

As I was last night, I am impressed by how many avid readers there are in my community and an equal number of writers, busy people who find it essential to make time for that silent, solitary act of encountering words (and themselves) on a page, an act that is both private and public, spiritual and pleasurable. It's the work of the soul.