On occasion, I try to get my work “out there.” This last week was a period of particularly great effort. After finishing a new manuscript, I asked some friends for feedback, then wrote a presentation letter and then sent it to publishers. Now, I wait. There’s no reason I should be optimistic about its chances; I’ve done like this many times before and have only received rejection letters or, more often, total silence. But I have, for better or worse, a disposition which allows me to feel hopeful, even positive it will be greeted with acclaim despite a record of almost total non-acceptance.
What would success be like? I’ve tried to imagine it. Here’s a possible scenario. I get a special delivery letter in which, instead of starting with “Thank you for your recent submission, but after careful consideration…” begins, “Dear Genius, we’re still recovering from the shock we received from reading the truth-filled-tome which you so graciously chose to bestow upon us…” A sizable advance check is included in the envelope as is a contract with an 80-20 deal in my favor. I sign; it sells a million copies.
I settle into my new comfortable reality. Next, I start expressing my opinions on political issues and the day’s social problems, while being photographed in upscale restaurants with a series of celebrities and pretty, smiling ingenues. I start laughing at my own jokes. Isn’t that the dream? To succeed so that one can extend indefinitely into the exterior world, never questioning oneself, fully occupying all available space. If such a thing happened, how could I not help but become a total jerk?
I’d always be right, the others, wrong. Like when driving, “the other guy” is always the one who causes the accident. On any given day, looking at any form of social media this is what one finds. Today, a quick scroll through a series of posts revealed to me the following critiques. The fault with the world is the USA, The European Union, religion (all forms but particularly Christianity and even more particularly, Catholicism), Putin, Zelensky, Politicians as a class, immigrants, liberals, conservatives… I stopped there. Noticeable is not one “mea culpa” was found upon that list of troublemakers.
I suspect that it’s this absence which is the real culprit behind the world’s ongoing difficulties. What if we are the other guy? That we, if certain minor positions of view were modified could easily hold the opinion of the other. I think this is what Rimbaud meant when he wrote “I am another,” what Socrates meant when he said, “All Men desire the good” and what Christ meant when he said, “No one is righteous.” We can’t be righteous because, though we believe we’re right, we’re all someone else’s other, imperfect, possessing only part of the whole picture.
I was riding the Paris metro yesterday and when I got into the car there was a full-blown argument in progress. Not surprisingly, the subject was politics. The people who were arguing were a young guy, around 22, and three older people, two men and a woman, around 70-75. Strangely, the young guy looked like an embryonic version of one of the two older men who was yelling himself hoarse. I heard a few words to give me an idea of the subject: Von der Leyen, the European Union, freedom of speech, liberty, Covid, lockdowns, unelected, the right to an opinion—but couldn’t identify the horns of the debate. The young guy was smirking, the older people screaming.
The young guy got off, as I did, at the next stop. I asked him what the argument had been about. He said one of the older people was wearing a button “URSULA SHUT UP” referencing Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union. He explained that he thought they were hypocrites, first saying everyone should have a right to express themselves and at the same time saying that Von der Leyen should shut up. It became clear. His smirk, their elderly screams, a dialogue between imagined poles. Trying to play the mediator, I said I understood his point, but perhaps they were mad because, while Von der Leyen has a right to her opinion as does every citizen, her opinion can affect the lives of millions of people while other private opinions didn’t have the same effect. He gave me a sideways glance, so I quickly thanked him for clearing it up and went in another direction.