Scott Fitzgerald's Last Act
city-journal.org
city-journal.org
> A mood of crisis prevailed in the 1930s, one that some of Fitzgerald’s contemporaries, including John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, struggled more openly to assimilate into their work. There was plenty of evidence that the country was coming apart. The 1932 Bonus Army occupation of Washington ended in a clash with two U.S. cavalry divisions. The Dust Bowl disaster created a mass migration to the West that came with its own politics of hard times. As late as 1938, U.S. unemployment stood at 19 percent.
> James Foster Wallace committed suicide
David Foster Wallace, and he was certainly a commercial writer. He's actually pretty famous for his commercial writing about tennis in particular.
> JD Salinger
He went into exile because his debut novel was so fabulously successful that he couldn't take the pressure of a follow-up. This seems like he'd be the very definition of a commercial writer, that his debut novel is extremely commercially successful.
But outside of those examples, you will find a large number of literary fiction writers who actually lived relatively normal lives. William Carlos William was a doctor as well as a writer - he served as Head of Pediatrics at a hospital in New Jersey for almost forty years until he died. Margaret Atwood turns 85 in a couple of weeks - her long term partner recently died but she’s still somewhat active on Twitter sharing information about the situation in Ukraine.
And I could keep going.
Writers are human and so express the full range of humanity, from dying young via suicide or alcoholism, to having successful medical practices and family lives.
And Hemingway did not drink himself to death, though I suppose he could have, given the time--but he used a shotgun.
I should say that a fair number of respected writers lived long and perhaps happy lives.
(Hemingway was, also, definitionally a commercial writer, as he was literally a war correspondent. I.e., someone writing serves commerce.)
What does "non-commercial" writer mean? Do you mean someone who is not selling their work for money? Or do you mean someone who is not working on advertising?
Or what about Terry Pratchett? As far as I know he died surrounded by his loved ones. But he died due to Alzheimer's disease, which must have been terrifying.
But if we can't call someone as successful as Victor Hugo or Terry Pratchett "non-commercial" then maybe someone obscure? Do you need to be published to be a writer? I don't think so. My friend's dad wrote a really funny, and heartfelt story about the history of their family. Never published it, probably nobody will publish it ever. I still count him as a writer. And he died surrounded by friends and family. Does that count as "ended up happy"?
It doesn’t help your comment much to start off talking about amorphous constraints when you conclude with something even more amorphous.
And finally, I’m sure they’re talking about literary fiction.
What an astute observation. Almost as if you got my point. Some writers are unknown to the whole world.
> How are we supposed to guess if he ended up happy?
I didn't ask if he did. I asked if what I described counts as "ended up happy"?
> It doesn’t help your comment much to start off talking about amorphous constraints when you conclude with something even more amorphous.
Perhaps if you give it an other read you will realise that what I'm doing is unpacking what I find amorphous about the question. Who is a writer? Who can we truly say that they have ended up happy? So yes, of course you will find much ambiguity in my answer.
But if you can't handle it imagine that all I said: Victor Hugo, Terry Pratchett.
I wonder. Having had a parent go through this, one of the small mercies, at least for them, was that they themselves were not aware of what was happening. Their world felt normal to them. Instead, they thought everything and everyone else around them was becoming confused, crazy and hostile.
But then, this is just one data point. As they say, when you have seen one case of dementia, you have seen one case of dementia.
I have the impression that Toni Morrison had a happy later life.
Denis Johnson published his important works after quitting drugs and alcohol. I also have the impression that his later life was happy.
Also, I don't know why you think "non-commercial" matters.
I think writers are similar to other people; the outcomes vary. We tend to notice the most atypical cases.
"Drunk up 'til his death", maybe.