The Anti-Social Novelist
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
I have a lot of authors in my social circle. It's true. I don't think they're usually as destructive as Steinbeck was to his family, but it's a rough road. They experience everything at high intensity-- you have to, to be able to write compelling fiction. Getting the accolades and money is about your only shot at making that hypersensitive existence "worth it", so to speak.
Negative reviews hit these people harder than you'd expect, it's true. If the reviewer's right, then there's cause for regret. If the reviewer's wrong, it means he didn't see the work as worth taking seriously. If you're not sure, then you start to question whether you know anything about your own writing. You can end up giving far too much rent-free mental real estate to someone who got bored on page 27 and wrote a shitty DNF review. And you can't respond, either; authors who respond to reviews (positive or negative) in the public end up regretting it. There's just no good that comes out of it.
Most of the authors I know end up envying the more visual artists, who can display their talents more easily. A painting is either ugly or beautiful and it's visible within a few seconds, even though it may take longer to pick up the subtleties. With a novel, you have to convince people to put hours of time into reading something they might end up hating. In traditional publishing, even getting read by someone of any importance at all takes monumental effort (that has very little to do with actual writing).
I'm curious, how does one accumulate a social circle with a lot of authors?
> Most of the authors I know end up envying the more visual artists, who can display their talents more easily.
From the rest of your post, I think your point is that it's much easier for a visual artist to show somebody "here is what I do" in a few minutes. But the trade-off is that the relationships people form with their favorite authors seem to be much deeper. For example, outside of maybe photography, it's hard for me to think of visual artists whose work is ascribed moral qualities by people who aren't critics.
Very easily in the right environment. I have several as well. If you're into media, journalism, academy (humanities, etc), you get to know and/or make friends with lots...
(And of course if you're an author or work in publishing/translation/editing, but that goes without saying).
If you work in a farm in rural areas, or you're say, a wall street guy, a waitor, a taxidermist, or a FAANG employee, it's understandingly more difficult...
Or perhaps I was downvoted for promoting easy ways of getting around poorly implemented paywalls.
OTOH, perhaps the downvotes were because of the shortness of my reply.
So if I'm being really mean: Many reviews serve only that purpose. It's not about the [thing]. It's about subtly influencing a life - yours. Narcissism, if you will, though much more subtle than usually understood and manipulative for sure. The critic puts himself above the creator, usually these days the critic has no hope in hell in creating anything equal, but gets to feel superior anyway. "I am not able to create a painting like da Vinci, I shall submit this pissoir."
Also if you are that hypersensitive: Look into avoidant personality disorder. And "Stalking the Soul" by Hirigoyen[1].
[1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FCNRD6L/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
Unremarkable to me: writers gonna write.
Fitwala tili du fit.