Tom & Alissa

As I’ve mentioned a bit, I’m deeply into and enamored with The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Naturally, I looked him up on Wikipedia and ended up on an essay by Kathryn Chetkovich, Franzen’s girlfriend, called “Envy”. You can read it here. It captures succinctly the difficulties of two people in a relationship, particularly when one or the other suddenly has success. It’s a difficulty that both of us face on a regular basis, and I find it’s a tricky balancing act; on the one hand, I’m totally delighted when Tom gets a great film job or takes a great picture, but on the other hand, I have my own pursuits in which I wish to find success. It’s been a particular struggle as I work a day job that sometimes seems like it’s in the way of doing the things I should be doing, but at the same time, I know I’m called here for a purpose.

Anyhow, this quote was particularly interesting.

My friends, trying to be helpful, had this to say: ‘I could never do that, be involved with a writer who was that much more successful than I was.’

But really: why not? Partly, I suppose, because a fellow writer’s success makes it that much harder to console oneself with thoughts of what Virginia Woolf called ‘the world’s notorious indifference’. The world, Woolf said, ‘does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact.’ So when the man was merely gifted but not particularly rewarded, I was comfortable; we were in it together, comrades in a world that didn’t care what we had to tell it. But now, what did his success prove, if not that when the gift is prodigious enough, the world does need us, it will pay?

When the subject of his success came up, often enough a friend would say, ‘The great thing is he really deserves it.’ Were they kidding? This was precisely what made it so hard. For once, the gods hadn’t made the stupid mistake of smiling on another no-talent, well-connected charlatan. No, this was a genuinely excellent piece of work by a man who had dedicated his life to doing such work and was now being rewarded for it. Proof that the system was not essentially corrupt and misguided, incapable of recognizing true merit, after all.

Where was the comfort in that?