CSotD: Sour grapes
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I remember, back in the days when I believed good work would find a spot, and when I believed I knew how to define good work, and when I believed that the world needed one more introspective novel about college, being particularly incensed when a genuinely-bad-by-any-measure college novel was published not only to some fanfare but to selection by the Literary Guild.
A long sentence, forgive me, but I had to pack a lot of naive misinformation into it.
Randy Glasbergen's "The Better Half" today, by contrast, is wonderfully concise and economic.
The connection is that my response to reading that GBBAM college novel was "If they're going to publish this crap, it's not fair that they won't publish my book!"
The cartoon makes the same point. Upon some growth and perspective, I realized that I was really complaining over which formulaic garbage they had chosen.
As it happens, they had chosen the formulaic garbage written by the guy whose father was an executive at a major publishing house and whose mother was a top-of-the-pyramid editor at a major literary review.
Quelle coincidence, n'est-ce pas?
Thing is, despite the blurbs wrung from parental contacts and the friendly reviews which ditto, the book sank like a rock.
But he was still getting published here and there some years later, enough to be attacked for plagiarism by another moderately successful author. Who happened by one of them there quelle coincidences to be the son of a best-selling giant in the industry.
Shit happens. And, with the right connections, it gets published.
That's an important lesson, but it leaves you in a pretty cynical place. So here's part two:
A former colleague was at a cocktail party and conversation turned to her vacation plans, which were to go back to her native England, visit family and do some more research for a historic novel she'd long been working on, which naturally led to a description of the work-in-progress and discussion of the history surrounding it.
Whereupon someone in a neighboring conversational pod broke in and said, "Excuse me, but I've just started out at a literary agency and am looking for clients. Your book sounds fascinating."
The difference in this case is that, (A) the contact was serendipity, not nepotism and (B) her manuscript actually was fascinating.
At least the tough guys thought so, and the fact that she's since published four more suggests that a reasonable number of readers agree.
The point being that sometimes a deserving piece emerges from obscurity simply because it came to the right person's attention, not for corrupt reasons but by happenstance. So Scott Fitzgerald is gallivanting around Paris, meets a young fellow named Hemingway and recommends him to his publisher, who, having been persuaded to take a look, agrees that the guy has talent.
Right place, right time, keeping the right company.
On the other hand, there's only so much you can do, apart from being ready if the moment presents itself: I've compared success in the arts to tossing a grape through an electric fan. It can happen, but a lot of pretty tasty grapes get smashed in the process. And, yes, some not-so-tasty ones get through.
Still, there's something odd in the theory that a publishing house — or a syndicate or a gallery or whoever — that has looked with favor on an obvious piece of crap should also look with favor upon your work.
It's like a pickup line that goes, "I notice you have a penchant for ugly losers. May I buy you a drink?"
And on a vaguely related theme:
In "The Knight Life," Keefe confronts his dad over refusing to take his high blood pressure seriously.
As one of many, many, too many older Americans facing both high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, I am right on board with this story arc. Especially as the fresh-corn season begins to wind down: I can spray a butter substitute on an ear of corn, but no salt? Oh, man, come on.
But I do try to eat sensibly, and the connection to the above being that what we need and what food stores offer — beyond raw materials — are not necessarily on the same page.
Food producers apparently assume that people who need to avoid salt and fat prefer buying food in very small quantities and are adamantly opposed to variety in their diets.
There's a bit of chicken-and-egg in this: If everyone stopped buying the salt-sugar-fat laden varieties of salad dressing and suchlike, grocery stores would stock more healthy stuff and perhaps not all in small cans and bottles.
And I know the reason there are these tiny little enclaves of low sodium/low fat foods on the shelf for the many people who need them, while there are whole aisles of gluten-free foods for the infinitesimally small percentage of people who actually are gluten-intolerant and not just latching on to the latest fad.
There's money to be made in serving fads. And going gluten-free isn't gonna kill anybody in the meantime.
Double-Stuf Oreos just might. There was nothing wrong with Single-Stuf Oreos, but you're a damn fool if you thought they were gonna roll out Sugar-Fre Oreos in large packages with splashy ads.
On the other hand, if the marketing people who have gotten the organic community so obsessed with kale, and everybody so obsessed with pomegranates and almonds, would turn their talent to low-sodium, low-fat prepared foods, well, then Social Security really would go broke, what with all the additional people living long enough to draw benefits.
Because, as Deep Throat never actually said, if you want to find the source of the crime, you just have to follow the money.
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