And yet readers take a very different perspective. I don't believe most of Albee's work reaches the accomplishment of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, or Tiny Alice. I don't think most of Mailer's work is as good as Armies of the Night.
Is much of my work better than Christmas at the Juniper Tavern, the 25-year-old play that was my "biggest hit"? I think so -- but I may be wrong. And after watching the television version of the play after so many years, I must admit it's a good piece of work, maybe even the "Oregon classic" that some critics called it. Yet there's something depressing about having written your best work a quarter century ago, if this in fact is the case. We think our current work is our best because we still strive to do better. Maybe all work is a failure from the point of view of the writer -- until, that is, considerable distance is put between the time of creation and the time of response. I still marvel at some of the achievements in my short stories of the 60s and 70s -- I'll read one and think, Wow, did I write that? I had the same response to the television drama the other day. Wow, did I write that? That's both a good feeling and a depressing one. We don't like to think we're washed up.
I've been very prolific, and if I make my own list of my best work, yes, Tavern would be on it but so would other things. As a play, for example, I prefer Sad Laughter. I prefer several screenplays, including The Brazen Wing. (I list my personal picks in my archive.)
Completed work is like a child. It grows up and leaves home, and you, the parent, become powerless over its future.
But I still, and I suspect always will, feel a stab in my gut when I run into someone I haven't seen in ages, and s/he brings up Christmas at the Juniper Tavern and asks in the next breath, Are you still writing? This is the sense in which success becomes a curse.
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