Author David Leavitt comes clean about literary envy, that nasty little toad of an emotion every writer experiences at some point - the “stab of alarm at seeing someone else praised, or that surge of schadenfreude at seeing someone else trashed. And afterwards, the faint stench of guilt rising like steam from the wound”.
Literary envy can be both ugly and irrational. Publication doesn’t stanch it. Neither do good reviews, or even royalties. I’ve seen a writer erupt with fury at seeing James Patterson’s novels placed more prominently in a bookstore than his own. “He’s crap. Why are HIS books plastered all over the front of this store? Why does HE get so much attention?” The writer having this rant was himself a New York Times bestselling author.
As for me, I try never to foam at the mouth with literary resentment. But sometimes, shamefully, I’ve crossed the line. Last year I opened the Sunday Times to find a new memoir serialized in the News Review section. Half-page color photo of the author, two entire broadsheet pages devoted to the book excerpt, plus a great review in the Culture section. I ground my teeth. Why did some writers get such splashy exposure? All that publicity, all that praise - how did this guy get so lucky?
Then I shut myself the hell up. The headline read, “The Day Al Qaeda Shot Me.”
(PS - and the book, Blood and Sand, is excellent.)
1 response so far ↓
Cliff Burns // August 26, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Oh, I hear you, Meg. Green is my natural colour and that’s NOT because I’m Irish. I read a piece by the great Anthony Burgess (author of CLOCKWORK ORANGE & EARTHLY POWERS) in which he confessed that he still broke into a sweat when he walked into a bookstore and realized how much competition there was out there, authors vying for shelf space.
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