What do (old) writers want?

Maybe because I've been listening to a reading of Dos Passos, I've been thinking of an office mate, a retiring professor, who was a great champion of the work of John Dos Passos -- and depressed that Dos Passos is virtually ignored today. What I remember now is something in my colleague's eyes. Something more than disappointment -- some confusion and disbelief, too, as if to say, Have we become this stupid, this decadent, that we ignore a genius like Dos Passos?

Literary fame is fickle. I am reminded of a course I took at UCLA, 19th Century Popular Lit, in which we read almost unreadable novels by writers no one had ever heard of. There's contemporary fame for you! In this century of classic American literature, the era of Melville, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, the popular writers were others who are forgotten today. Whose books I considered terrible today.

Tastes change. And there's no accounting for taste. Which makes it all a crap shoot.

Where does this leave the older writer? I'm not sure there are many generalities to make here but I think one is this: any serious older writer wants to be taken seriously. S/he wants a sense of the work having mattered, that it is still worth reading today. That's why it is so exciting, so satisfying, but also a bit mystifying, to learn that my 1967 essay is being studied in a graduate seminar today. 44 years later, it still is worth discussing! This essay was a paper I wrote for my own graduate seminar, which the professor (who disagreed with it!) urged me to send out. I did and it got published immediately ... and became controversial ... and much later inspired a book length treatment under the same title. And is still read today.

Now a writer can't ask for more than this. I've never deluded myself into thinking I'd ever be a "popular" writer but I always wanted to be a writer that "mattered" and getting evidence relevant to this is not easy and is accidental when it appears. The circle in which my work matters is small but that's fine. I want the work to live. I want it to live longer than I live. Then I've made a contribution, I've stirred the pot and kept the juices flowing for others. Maybe I've even inspired someone.

So the most satisfying moments at this late stage of my career are when I learn this has happened. By and large I am as invisible and marginal as most writers in this country. Nonetheless I get periodic news that the work has mattered to someone -- an essay is required reading in a class, my work in hyperdrama is the basis of a dissertation in a foreign country, a fan letter comes out of nowhere that's written with passion and understanding ... small and insignificant from one point of view but large and essential from another.

The main thing I feel is a sense of being blessed. I've had incredible good fortune. I've been in the right place at the right time more than once. I've had extraordinary help and support along the way. I've put myself and my work in a position at this late stage of the game that I can say I've given my best shot to keeping the work alive. It's accessible, for one. No small accomplishment, though much easier today than in the pre-digital universe. I've always been comfortable with letting my work speak for itself. It will never be widely popular and shouldn't be. But it has the opportunity to find its audience, and I believe it will continue to do so.

I really like the fact that my professor, who disagreed with my 1967 essay, nonetheless thought it should be published and told me where to send it. That's what education is about. That's the karma I try to repeat as a professor myself now.

The beat goes on. And the beat goes on.