None But a Blockhead

[image error] My friend the biographer/playwright/librettist.critic/blogger Terry Teachout recently posted an entry on his blog, "About Last Night," discussing the pros and cons of authors publicizing their work. What sparked his discussion was a series of posts by other bloggers criticizing the practice: Patrick Kurp, of Anecdotal Evidence, found it distasteful and quoted from the poet L. E. Sissman, who urged "serious" writers to abjure any self-expression except through their work; D. G. Myers (responding to Kurp's post) further deplored it, concluding that "It is impossible to live wholly for literature, but it is disgusting that we cannot."

Terry sympathizes up to a point (“If you get to where you prefer peddling books to writing them, then you’re in the wrong line of work”); but as a writer who does television and radio interviews, makes bookstore appearances, and promotes his work on Twitter, Facebook, and his blog, he can't and won't join the ranks of those who deplore such things. "Why do I do them?" he asks, and answers: "I work for a living. Writing is the work that I do best. It's my job, not my hobby." He goes on:

Marketing my work--peddling it, if you like--is part of that job. It doesn't embarrass me to tell people why I think they might enjoy reading my books or seeing my shows. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes wearying, sometimes both. On occasion it can be ludicrous. (Yes, I've given interviews to TV twinkies who didn't have the least notion of what the book that we were purportedly "discussing" was about.) But I know that if I don't do the bad part faithfully, I won't get to do the good part anymore. I wish it were otherwise, but as Jimmy Durante used to say, "Them is the conditions that prevails."

As the great Dr. Samuel Johnson (indubitably a “serious” writer) observed, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." To which the corollary should be: if you’re a professional, you have to do your job – all of it.

There is, however, another and arguably more important reason to post those blog entries, make those appearances, and do those interviews; and that is to connect to the readers who are your audience. Without readers, are you really writing at all? If you have something to say, don't you need someone to say it to? Writing is very lonely work, and loneliest when all you hear is the sound of your own voice. So it's heartening, even – sometimes – exhilarating, to make contact with those invisible readers for whom you've been doing the work, to hear their reactions or questions, to know that you've delivered the goods, not just for yourself, but for them.

The rest (to paraphrase Patrick Kurp, and both Hamlet and the Talmud) is solipsism.