Write to Suffer, Publish to Starve
Originally published in the anthology Scratch.
“I write for my pleasure,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote to his publisher, Maurice Girodias, in 1955, in an effort to extract from him the delayed second half of the advance for Lolita, “but publish for money.” This beloved quotation serves as a succinct abstract for an aspirational philosophy most writers at least sort of embrace: we create our art without regard for its extrinsic value, deep inside our batcave of rectitude; and only once the work has met our approval as a fully realized expression of our aesthetic ideals do we issue it into the world in the hope – shruggingly expressed through professional intermediaries – that someone might be willing to pay us for it.
On the face of it, this philosophy seems unambiguously useful: fiscally pragmatic and mojo-positive. The work’s worth, in dollars, to publishers and readers is immaterial, in this conception of the writer’s purpose. Whether we are given a “six-figure advance” (industry parlance for “ninety-five thousand dollars”) for our blue-crystal-meth art object, or a virtual stack of mildly insulting rejection emails, matters not at all. There is writing, and there is commerce, and between them stands a impenetrable wall of inestimably thick bulletproof glass. The writer can make out the agents and editors and publicists over there, on the other side, if she presses her nose to the wall’s scratchless, ungouged, greasy and slightly bloodstained surface; the wall – its integrity-preserving inviolability bending and scattering light – diffuses and warps their horrifying corporeal forms as they intermingle like eels in a tank, their mouths opening and closing, their chests convulsing with silent laughter, their meaty pink hands coming into direct contact with actual money.
But don’t peek. It’s not healthy. Indeed, the writer should stand as far from the wall as he can, facing away into the black void of creation, where all that can be made out in the cigarettey gloom are the slightly crooked contours of a battered desk; the squat, platypusian outline of a manual typewriter; a minor Alp of scribbled-upon and balled-up paper; and a secondhand pine bookshelf, sagging from the weight of every word every other writer has managed to publish since 1439, when Johannes Gutenberg brought to Europe, from the Holy Roman empire, the device that would eventually be employed to transform our profoundest thoughts, emotions, and desires into a form that insects can comfortably nest in and that doubles in size if you drop it in the bathtub.
Here’s the problem, though, with the Nabokovian dictum: for most of us, writing is not particularly pleasurable, and publishing does not make us much money. Most writers I know work in a state of perpetual anxiety and self-disgust, and regard the products of their labor as profoundly disappointing. I don’t wish to embrace the cliché, as pernicious as the one I’ve so far spent this essay mocking, of the tortured artist (in the self-mythologizing and eye-rollingly hackneyed words of Paul Auster) “bleeding words onto a page.” Writing is not coal mining. It is merely a pain in the ass, albeit one that tends to invite psychic distress, especially given the bewilderment with which it is greeted by a writer’s loved ones, once they realize what one actually does all day while writing: i.e., not much. Maybe a more appropriate rallying cry would be, “Write to suffer, publish to starve.”
In all honesty, I’ve quoted that Nabokov line to graduate students hundreds of times. In the hothouse environment of the writing workshop, it’s a handy reminder that, despite our career ambitions, we should focus on the work when we’re at work, and worry about publishing later. But I’m wary of discouraging students, or any writer, really, from developing a relationship to the idea of commerce. The separation of art and commerce, while a noble aim, is in reality an endeavor akin, in the rarefied and impoverished professional universe where writers actually reside, to the separation of smoking and drinking. A nice thought, but yeah, good luck with that.
Besides, commerce is more than money. It was fine for Nabokov to tell his publisher that he published for money, for it was money Nabokov was trying to secure. But money isn’t the only reason he published, or that anyone publishes. We publish because we are exhibitionists. We publish to be admired. We publish to be a part of something that excites us. We publish to feel special, to feel real, to feel brave, to feel afraid. We publish to evoke emotion in others, to prove Mom wrong. We publish because other people publish, and that’s what is done. We publish so that we can talk to other people who publish, about publishing. We publish so that we can get contributors’ copies, so that we can get a job, so that we can get laid. We publish for an excuse to go to New York, to have something to flog at conferences, to have something to brag about on airplanes. This is all commerce. Our cocktail party banter with other writers is commerce. Our blog posts about books we like, or loathe, are commerce. Our barroom readings and subtweets are commerce. We parlay our genetic predisposition to language, and our hard work developing it, into companionship, attention, admiration, criticism. This is normal, and we all do it.
It is the rare serious writer who does not wish to publish. There is only one in recent memory: J. D. Salinger. Certainly it is possible to regard Salinger as a paragon of literary integrity. He wrote precisely what he wanted, for decades, and showed it to no one. But the posthumous masterworks we have hoped for have so far failed to materialize. Perhaps they’re forthcoming. Or perhaps they fall further along the axis of disconnection from reality established by Salinger’s last published story, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” an epistolary novella that appeared in the New Yorker in June of 1965, and which, aside from its inalienable lastness, is noteworthy mostly for its tiresome digressions, obscure stylistic flourishes, and twee self-absorption. It’s pretty bad. It reads like the work of a man who hates to be read.
Our commerce with the world is not corollary to our art. It is, rather, a vital component of our art, perhaps our art’s reason for being. If we regard writing as an act of empathy that presupposes and celebrates the existence of other people, then its commerce with humanity must represent its consummation. The money is just so that we can eat, or to keep a roof over our heads, or (in the pitiful amounts that are typically involved in an exchange between writer and publisher of literary product) a mildly apologetic acknowledgment of labor. But money isn’t the real currency, here. The real currency of literary commerce is love.
Now, I’m not singing kumbaya to litbiz, saying that we all have to be besties, plump for each other on facebook, and get drunk together at AWP. I’m not advocating short stories with happy endings (although, seriously, try one sometime) or schlock poems about adorable animals. I’m saying that every writer needs to conceive, develop, and maintain a literary relationship to her family, her country, her community, her peers. A writer ought to be thinking about this, yes, when he sends his work out to be published, but also when he’s writing it, and when he’s contemplating writing it. A literary work unconcerned with the desires of its audience is like a thoughtless gift, a crass experiment in social engineering, like the statue of Jesus your pious aunt bought for your atheist front garden and expects a thank-you note for.
What the theoretical separation of art and commerce is meant to prevent is, of course, pandering. Good art is not supposed to service the lazy reader; it’s supposed to challenge, surprise. It is supposed to change the world. But you aren’t going to change the world without loving it first, even if you love it in the most resentful, confused, exasperated imaginable way. Respect the world, even as it pisses you off. Otherwise you’ll produce nothing but hermitty manifestos, bursts of static from your own private Yaddo.
Art and commerce are not separate. They are not even different. Write to suffer, publish to starve. And have the courage to give your work a purpose, to want a future for it, however painful it may be to hope.
