Lost and found…
It’s been said that the measure of your time on this planet is how long people remember you after you’re dead. Notice I didn’t say that measure had to be positive. A person could be a scurrilous SOB and be remembered for a long time—Hitler and Stalin come to mind, for example. The other extreme might be Gandhi or Mother Teresa.
Creative people have an advantage in this respect because memory of the person can fade fast (even with the internet, very few people really know you, on the average), but the memory of their creations can live on and on. Michelangelo comes to mind. Maybe in some far future people will even forget his name, but his creations could be eternal, to a close approximation. Sculptors, painters, musicians, and, yes, authors, can enjoy a kind of permanence that others can’t.
That might be a motivation for creating works of art and literature, a motivation that today could range from the altruistic desire to leave your artistic message to future generations, to the simple financial desire to bequeath something of dollar value to your progeny. For the creator of artworks and literature, the “discovery problem” might not be solved in their lifetime. Fortune is fickle, though, so some of their survivors, those holding the rights to their works, might become rich when their ancestor’s discovered.
Examples of lost and found artworks and literature abound. For a time, people forgot about J. S. Bach and Gustav Mahler. More recently, Charles Ives has become increasingly popular. Many composers are being rediscovered every year. (Some gen-xers and millennials are even discovering that sixties’ music is pretty damn good!) Whether any owners of rights to these composers’ works have become rich doesn’t really matter. The positive measure of their life’s work has increased because people now remember them, if only by name.
Phillip K. Dick, a prolific sci-fi writer, was rediscovered by Hollywood (I stopped counting the number of his stories turned into movies with “The Adjustment Bureau”—there might be more). I’m waiting for some forgotten writers like Chesterton and Lovecraft to be rediscovered too. (I’m talking about Hollywood, not cult followings.) With the glut of good books and good authors we have now, I can safely say that many won’t be discovered or rediscovered by Hollywood. They might never be discovered by the reading public either. But they’ll always be lurking out there, ready to be discovered—ebooks aren’t like pics stored on your smart phones that are lost to the ages because Amazon will always be willing to sell them.
I’m not sure any writer should take comfort in that. Mr. Dick would have been much happier to forget about Hollywood and sell millions of books, I’m sure. In my case, my refrain is like that old Queen song: “I want it now!” (Maybe not Queen? My trivial pursuit prowess is diminishing with age. Bear with me.) But I’m a realist. It probably won’t happen, at least not in my lifetime. And, from my personal point-of-view, and taking my cue from Mr. Dick, it’s irrelevant if it happens afterwards.
Why these morose thoughts? My answer could be philosophical, morphing the tree-falling-in-the-forest quip to: Does an unread novel found only in Amazon’s ebook cloud truly exist? My answer could be whimsical: Will my descendants even want the rights to my books? Between TV and video games, will your future descendants even be able to read? It could be more epic: If computers and other devices disappear in some dystopian cataclysm, do my stories still exist? Forget Amazon’s cloud—it’ll be gone!
The first question in the last paragraph, as it turns out, isn’t valid. These thoughts aren’t morose! I rediscovered Chesterton when studying the mystery genre in order to hone my mystery writing skills a few years back. Lost and found. Recently, John Stockmyer’s son introduced me to his father’s books (my beta-reader, Debby Kelly, introduced me to the son). Lost and found, the first because I’d never have discovered the Z-series
of mysteries without Debby and John, and the second because I’m thoroughly enjoying those detective stories. Like I said, there are many good books and good authors out there to discover. It’s a reader’s world.
The case of Stockmyer is encouraging, in fact. I always say that if I can entertain just one reader with one of my books, that book is a success. (Actually, I don’t know if I’ve always said it exactly like that.) This author entertained me and continues to do so. That author, and others that I discover, in my casual reading as well as reviewing, is a success. In my case, I don’t know if I can still smile at that success after my time on Earth is done. I’ll ask John when I see him in that other cloud that Amazon doesn’t control.
I think it’s hard for a writer today, no matter how he’s published. I’m guessing about 95% or more of us won’t be discovered in our lifetime. (Same goes for most other artsy people too, I believe. My father, like John Stockmyer, was an artist; like John, he painted because he loved to do it, not to get rich. That’s my creed too.) To end on a positive note, you must keep writing. You can’t win this lottery if you don’t continue playing the game. Unlike the real lottery, though, you can still win after you’ve died. That’s a good joke on that old hooded guy with the sickle. Puts a real muzzle on his creepy cackle.
[Note: The second part of this post “Hard-boiled or minimalist writing?” will appear in two days, this coming Thursday.]
In libris libertas….
