Hilarious essay by Elizabeth Royte in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review about the many stages of ….. not grief, but publishing a book.
“For any writer, the publication of a book, labored over for years, is an exciting event. But excitement is a fleeting emotion, and the business of publicizing the book, so that it sells and the author can earn out his advance, quickly displaces any initial euphoria. The writer then embarks on a tortured journey toward acceptance of the fact, several months after publication, that his book isn't going to vault him into the empyrean of fame, or even improve his life. At the intersection of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's stages of grief and Stendhal's stages of love, the contemporary author trudges along a predictable path that can only be described, in hindsight, as self-induced misery.”
It starts with euphoria, it ends in self-hatred. In short, writers are pathetic.
1 comment:
pathetic, maybe...but also tough, because who in their right mind chooses to embark on a tortured journey? These people are obviously focused on something more important than the vageries of the publishing world -- or at least I would hope so.
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