Failing is an essential part of being a writer, says author Stephen Marche
The novelist and critic spoke to Shelagh Rogers about his book On Writing and Failure
Stephen Marche says most writers are failures, and he's no exception.
The Canadian novelist, essayist and cultural commentator is the author of a half dozen books and a contributor to major publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Esquire. Throughout his career, he's had his share of rejections. About 2,000 in fact — he's kept track of all of them.
His latest book is On Writing and Failure. It's an extended essay full of humour, wit and the hard-earned truth about what it takes to be a professional writer and what it means to be successful. Perhaps it's an illusion.
Marche spoke with Shelagh Rogers about On Writing and Failure on The Next Chapter.
Stephen, what drew you to writing in the first place?
When I was about 10 years old, my father had a midlife crisis. He decided that he wanted to do a PhD in semantics at the London School of Economics. He lifted the whole family and moved us to England for a year. Then when we moved back, he didn't have a lot of people to talk to about semantics and linguistics.
I remember having these very long conversations with him about things like Charles Pierce's theory that bees have language because they do a figure-eight over flowers.
Basically when I was about ten, I got the impression that what adults did was language.- Stephen Marche
Then I had a teacher who was an eccentric man and made us stand up to attention when he came in to the room. I basically got a 19th-century literary education. We read a lot of 16th- and 17th-century poets — Sir Philip Sydney, people like that. Basically when I was about 10, I got the impression that what adults did was language.
I've since learned that what adults do is money, but I haven't been able to lose that impression.
You open with a kid writer who asks you, "Is it ever easier? Do you ever grow a thicker skin?" Can you share that story?
It was this kid writer and I was trying to help her get something published, a piece about her mom dying. And I just couldn't. It is one of those things — no one wanted it. She was like, "Does this ever get easier? Do you ever get a thicker skin?"
I'd asked that exact same question of Nathan Englander, who's the famous short story writer, and he told me that he'd asked that question to Philip Roth and that Philip Roth said, "No, not only does your skin not get any thicker, it just gets thinner and thinner until they can see right through you."
One of the things that I wanted to capture in this book is that failure is not really an external state.- Stephen Marche
One of the things that I wanted to capture in this book is that failure is not really an external state. It's not like if you're a writer, you're going to achieve certain things and then you'll be a success. That's not how it works. In fact, it's some of the writers that I've met who have seemed like the most successful people, who most feel like failures or have you know the deepest anxieties.
Does suffering play a role in writing?
I wanted to resist the idea that alcoholism leads to good writing, or mental illness leads to good writing. When you look over the historical record, it's really not true. Germaine Greer actually wrote an amazing essay about drinking and writing. It just completely destroys the idea that drunkenness leads to better creativity.
On the other hand, when I researched this stuff, a lot of unbelievable work came out of immense suffering. I don't think Machiavelli could have written The Prince unless he'd been tortured. He needed that experience in order to get out the truth of power that he revealed.
Or Dostoyevsky, who was put through a mock execution, where he thought he was going to be executed. They had the guns lined up and then they pulled it away and said, "No, you're actually just going to prison for a few years." That experience, that incredible horror that he went through was integral to his experience.
How is your career different from the experience of writers coming up in the profession now?
There's been a lot of change. I've had to adapt to that change. It was only 15 years ago I was a Shakespeare professor writing avant-garde novels. That was just going to be my life. And if I'd been born in a different time, that's just what I would have stayed.
Writers who were 10 years older than me had it way easier than I have it. And writers who have 10 years younger than me have it way harder than I have it- Stephen Marche
The point is that the changes are constant. Every five years you basically have to reinvent yourself as a creative force because the economic basis of it or the method of dissemination of it or the method of composition of it changes so drastically.
What's next for writers?
In terms of the craft, I don't see it actually changing that much. Art is not going away. It's the opposite. What happened with design and Photoshop is about to happen with language. What happened with mathematics and the pocket calculator is about to happen with language.
Art is not going away. It's the opposite.- Stephen Marche
But you don't need to suddenly not know mathematics because you have a pocket calculator and you don't need to not have a design sense because you have Photoshop. In fact, you need a more refined sense of design, a more refined mathematical mind to get the most out of these technologies. And I think there's going to be a large artistic boom that emerges out of this, which I'm really excited about.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
