Sunday, May 17, 2009

I'm Not a Class Whore, But...

I entered a lot of frontlist at work this week. Publishing happens in seasons and there are sets of catalogs for each one. I'm not sure how other bookselling software programs work, but at Books & Books we go through the catalogs by hand and manually put the titles into our inventory. I found the author bios grating.

The authors are attractive. Their photos look like actor's headshots, some of them as large as the book jacket. Call that a byproduct of the media age. The new reality of marketing is if all other pieces of the work - talent, potential audience, story - are equal, then pick the one who looks sexy on a dustjacket. That's irksome, but expected. Like marketing hyperbole, urgent promises that this debut author's brilliant voice is a unique contribution to the pantheon of literature. But the pedigrees, those were like splinters in my brain.

Apparently, I should have worried less about exercising my craft while others are asleep, stealing a few precious hours before it's time to go to work, and worried more about my college career. To fit in with other authors in the fall catalog, I should have majored in English or History at an Ivy-league college and moved to New York City upon graduation. Preferably to Brooklyn. Well, I didn't do those things. I've lied many times about getting a full scholarship to Yale, most notably when I'm not directing my own life enough, but that never happened. My high school guidance counselor told me my ACT and SAT scores were good enough for Yale. Over the years of grease-smelling clothes and heat-lamp burns and kissing shoppers asses, that counselor's encouragement became a full scholarship. I use that lie to prove I had potential at one point, even if I'm not doing much of much with my life. Except it's a lie, and all it proves is that I sometimes suffer from low self-image.

I didn't want to go to college. I was interested in art and writing - what could a classroom possibly teach me about those things? I've since learned this is a family trend. Promotions have been declined. Opportunities ignored. Chances wasted. Our family values intelligence and learning, but actually turning that knowledge into a lucrative career is beneath us in a way I don't understand. So we scrape by and keep the best of ourselves hidden from the world.

Really, I'm afraid. I'm so afraid of failure I can't even try.

But I look at these children of privilege and their debut novels and tell myself, "See? Writing is for the elite. It's a little club you'll never get into." I laugh in recognition at Geoff Dyer's writing struggles in Out of Sheer Rage, but I also hate him for all that free time he has to lounge around Europe. He expresses jealousy of the enjoyment working people get out of holidays and weekends, and I want to slap his handsome British face (it would also be easier to take if he wasn't so fucking talented). Reading the dinner parties of James Salter and John Cheever hasn't helped, nor has working in a ritzy subsection of Miami like Coral Gables, or slurping oysters with trust-fund-private-school-yachting-teens at Monty's in Coconut Grove. I am seething, ignoring the choices I've made in favor of decrying the life I've been dealt.

Pathetic. Profoundly useless. Spoiled, in its way.

I've written past the point where being published matters; it's my only way of processing the world. For instance, writing this post has shown me why this is bothering me so much lately. I need to get over it and buckle down. Compared to the obstacles I put in front of myself, class is nothing.

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