You can substitute any authors who are relevant, but the bottom line is:
Herman Melville: Moby Dick is considered by many critics and scholars to be the greatest American novel, and is or ain’t it’s still read by thousands* of college students every year a century and a half after its publication and pretty much any halfway educated American will catch a reference to Captain Ahab or ‘Call me Ishmael’. His lesser works (some say his better ones, especially Billy Budd are all still in print as well, and he’s arguably bigger now than ever.
Certainly he’s bigger now than he ever was in life. He was panned by many critics in his own life and rarely made enough from his writing to pay the bills. He died thinking of himself as a complete failure.
Jacqueline Susann: Critics hated her with intensity and some of her biggest fans regarded her as enjoyable trash, but stores couldn’t keep her in stock. She sold more than a hundred million copies in her lifetime which consequently made her very very rich. She had famous friends, penthouses, movie deals, traveled with the jet set, and save perhaps for Capote she was the most famous writer of her day, one of the few to be a celebrity in their own right.
Susann died relatively young. Within a few years all of her books (even Valley of the Dolls were out of print and rarely read.** Most readers under 60 have never read her and if they know of her it’s as “the 60s trash novel queen”.
So-
You can substitute names all around- John K. Toole or Thoreau or Poe for Melville, Frank Yerby*** or Irving Wallace*** or Frances Parkinson Keyes*** for Susann, but the point is-
If the ghosts of Salieri and Mozart, both now genies due to clerical errors- offered you the chance to write one (or more) novels that would survive you for centuries and be hailed as wonderful works of art but would never support you financially- you may not be in poverty but you’d never be able to quit the day job for very long- OR you could write things of great popularity that allowed you to live in luxury but you’d be forgotten twelve minutes after (maybe before) your death- basically Literary immortality/lifetime mediocrity or Lifetime fame and fortune/no immortality- which would you take?
Curious to see the results.
*Millions more read the Cliff’s Notes and Spark Notes.
**Valley and a few others have been re-released in the last few years after long dormancy.
***Bestselling authors who all sold millions of books and got rich in their lifetimes but are now mostly out of print and forgotten.
It’s indefensible and I freely admit it, but
Show me the money.
True Moby Dick is still read, but a fat lot of good that did Melville. And aside from a few scholars is anything much more than his name still remembered? And most people still read him because they’re required to and get relatively little enjoyment out of it.
Obviously we’d all like to be more like Twain: great respect and adulation and lots of money in his lifetime (true he squandered a ton of it but he got it, and he got it back) and immortality, BUT, if the choice was one or the other it would mean more to me to have the means to live well and enable those I love to do so as well and when I’m gone than for them to be able to say “I know that dead guy who won that award and whose book inspired that movie nobody saw”.
I have to agree with you. Moby Dick may be a classic, but Melville considered himself a failure. Let me know I’ve entertained millions with my scribbling while I’m still around to enjoy the fame and money. (And I have read Valley of the Dolls, and I’m not over 60.)
You are comparing apples to oranges. Both authors were popular-for a while. The difference was that Melville’s works came at a time when there were few American novelists (even JF Cooper was not as well regarded), so scholars searched his works and wrote deep analysis about them.
Jacqueline Susann’s stuff was written to appeal to young women, in a specific time and place. They were also considered just entertainment, with no deep philosophical meanings. She was a writer of pop fiction, and it is not surprising that few read her today. Who really reads “Moby Dick” for plasure anyway? Damn few, I would say.
I make a good living now, so give me literary immortality. I idea that I touch the future is the philosophical foundation of what I do anyway, so how could I resist?
Honestly? I’m so used to be being poor, and I’ve thought of myself as an artist since I was three. So I’d have to go the Melville route. I’D know my work would find its place in history, and that would be good enough for me. It would indulge my usual feeling that I’m the only one in the room who really knows what’s up.
Well, are the genies offering me the type of talent that allows me to crank out a book every few months, or the kind that makes me toil and slave for years to come up with a single novel?
Let’s face it, if I can whip out two or three books a year, I’d be much happier writing them on my own private island, attended by a staff, and flying my own jet to the book launch.
But if I’m going to struggle over a manuscript for years, torturously rewriting every sentence until my fingertips bleed, grappling with my inner demons until, my physical and emotional strength utterly spent, I manage to mail it to a publisher and then collapse in exhaustion – I want literary immortality as part of the deal.
Obviously they’ve little in common, but the question can apply to any two authors: would you rather write a novel (or create another work of art) that will live long after you but never make you rich or even much recognized in your lifetime, or would you rather create something that makes you comfortable and lauded in your lifetime but essentially dies along with you. Would you rather have the success (not the life, but the monetary success of) Vincent Van Gogh or Thomas Kinkade.
Good choices. Two authors whose work I find just about unreadable but I think I probably read more of Susann before tossing it. I know more people who would admit to reading Melville but not many claimed to have enjoyed it. So Susann for me on the score of pleasure.
A man has to eat. I do not aspire to be Manuel of Poictesme, and spend my entire life trying to create a fine figure in the world.
Give me fame and fortune, and let someone else write for the ages. I’d be happy being a hack, as long as I could be a rich hack.
