Cheap Thought!

"If I announce on Facebook that something of mine has been published, non-literary relatives and

acquaintances, for whom publication seems to be something like winning the lottery, will offer their

mandatory congratulations. That is not, of course, the same as their reading what I have written.

However, “No prophet is taken seriously in his home town”, as one translation of Jesus’s remark

would have it. It’s even less likely that a writer of serious fiction would be taken as serious by their

acquaintances. Non-readers have always outnumbered readers, of course. But my impression

at the moment is that writers outnumber readers.

I have not profited from my literary efforts materially in any significant way. Serious dedication to

authorship, or to the arts generally, is unlikely to have practical consequences of a happy kind,

as everyone working in this sector knows. Ego-boosting rewards of a less material kind have

actually been rather paltry, too. When an editor publishes something you’ve written, gives you a

thumb’s up – ‘one of those’, as comedian Rodney Dangerfield (who never got any) used to say – it

is nice; and seeing what one has written all gussied up in print, or online, evokes a joyous little

frisson – which vanishes like fog on a warm morning."

- Jim Gallant, What Am I Doing?, Philosophy Now