literary rivals

on that Emily Gould divorce essay & "American Fiction"

When I was a junior or senior in high school, I won a fiction writing contest or was nominated for a fiction writing award or something.

And I remember this girl in front of me, who was high-achieving (maybe not gifted?) questioned my inclusion in front of the whole class.

Not that she had read my story or thought that I was a bad writer, but it was more like, “Wait, what? Him?”

At that point, I mostly wore jean cutoffs (Florida!) with punk rock shirts, but I had begun to cultivate a literary image (at least I thought I was).

I really liked Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise.

I had a copy of On The Road. I read Catch-22.

I was on the newspaper staff and managed the literary magazine.

I checked a few of the cringe-y male literary boxes.

So yeah I was a little offended by her reaction. Again, not because my story was great or that I’m a great writer, but I felt like I somewhat fit the part. I thought I was literary.

But she didn’t see it that way.

And that my friends, was my first “literary rival.”

Or my first experience with such.

I had a few others.

• I kinda got offended when in college my math whiz friend took a poetry class.

• Or when a girl I dated for a few months thought I’d “get along” with this other guy who supposedly was writing the Great American Novel, and did in fact go on to edit those legit institutional journals, not the student-run ones.

• I became frustrated in the late 00s when people my age started publishing really great books…and I didn’t.

The lure of…

But there comes a time when you realize you aren’t so young anymore, and you are what you are and sometimes your peers outperform you and then sometimes (a lot of times!) even younger people start outperforming you.

There really doesn’t feel like enough fame to go around, at least in a certain few groups.

And that was one of my main impressions from this Emily Gould essay called “The Lure of Divorce.”

If you haven’t read it, go over there now.

I think parts of it are misguided, but there is a tenderness to it.

Gould was a certain literary “it” girl in the 00s whose career has taken off and stalled and then has settled into some type of freelance / personal memoir hybrid.

But she wrote candidly about her desires and thoughts about a divorce from her husband, who also was a kinda 00s literary “it” guy.

The essay has a lot going on, from drug use to motherhood to love and the difficulties of marriage but I was really interested in the rivalry part.

Here’s an excerpt:

“I built a case against my husband in my mind. This book of his was simply the culmination of a pattern: He had always put his career before mine; while I had tended to our children during the pandemic, he had written a book about parenting. I tried to balance writing my own novel with drop-offs, pickups, sick days, and planning meals and shopping and cooking, most of which had always been my primary responsibility since I was a freelancer and Keith had a full-time job teaching journalism. We were incompatible in every way, except that we could talk to each other as we could to no one else, but that seemed beside the point.”

Arguably, her husband (Keith Gessen) was more successful than her when they got married, but it was a weird tie—it wasn’t like he was James Patterson or Colleen Hoover.

So in some ways maybe Emily wanted that challenge as an excuse? Or that she was drawn to the rivalry? That she could both be with him and take him down?

Writers don’t have an abundance mindset, we have a scarcity mindset.

Especially if you’re fighting for ever-dwindling freelance jobs, or magazine jobs, or tenure-track professorships.

I’m not saying this is the right paradigm for writing or writing careers, but if that’s the game you’re in (or want to be in), it can be zero sum.

Having people chat about your article online is a form of flattery, but it doesn’t usually pay extra.

Turns out however, that Gould’s article was published in NY Mag and then quickly followed by her own literary-tinged(?) advice column.

So nice marketing on that.

…American Fiction

Related, I caught the Oscar-nominated film American Fiction in theaters but it’s about to hit streaming.

This film is multi-layered in a different way than Gould’s column, there’s a lot about race and family, but also at the heart is another type of rivalry.

What the true self wants to write vs what the market wants to read.

The protagonist in this film is a writing professor who writes books that don’t sell.

Then inspired by the success of a writer he thinks has a lower-quality book, decides to write a book that’s in a totally different style as a joke, and then of course it takes off.

He, in his pretentiousness, can’t believe it, yet because of family issues swallows his pride and takes the money anyway.

The rival in this case is another successful writer, but also himself and his own beliefs about what art should be, about what art people like him should or should not create (he’s African-American) and the type of writing that he himself can create.

The ego is the rival.

And then this quote in the last 3rd of the movie slayed me:

“Potential is what people see when what's in front of them isn't good enough.”

So yeah.

Here I am now thinking about high school and college, and was there potential? Yeah.

Was I a frustrated writer then? Yeah.

Am I one now? Yeah to some extent yeah.

Part of the rivalry is what I believe to be my potential and that unsettledness that may never go away. In some ways it keeps me going, and in other ways it completely frustrates me and throws me into complete complacency.

You’ll never be as good as your potential promises, says my discontented self.

But that doesn’t necessarily help me do the work either.

At some point, the fists against yourself have to come down, too.

You have to be at peace with what’s in front of you, rivals and all.

Keep going-

Josh Spilker

PS: I’m trying to write more in the middle of the week, and then will send a roundup of things I’m reading on Saturday. Please share this if you enjoyed it, cheers!