Confessions of a Former Literary Book Snob

People don’t want the ache — they crave the fairytale ending, the one million copies sold.

Licensed from Adobe Stock // Drobot Dean

I’ve never read Eat Pray Love, and when I saw the movie in theaters I’d rather get a hundred papercuts to the face. I was a part of a group of literary types who thought we were cool because of our snobbery, not in spite of it. We thought Gilbert frivolous, privileged, deserving of side-eyes and media roasts — and we hadn’t even read her book. We eviscerated a stranger who was brave enough to wake from her sleeping life and see an entire book through — all because she didn’t write what we once considered the big books, the important books.

Whatever that means.

“We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth–nobody was ever thinking about you anyhow. –Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

For much of my twenties and early thirties, I was judgmental and I surrounded myself with other judgmental writers. It’s true, you are the company you keep. We thought ourselves smarter than everyone else; we were insufferable, self-indulgent, annoying in all caps. Art wasn’t art unless you were creating something important, something that would endure, even though the judgment of that art was wholly subjective.

Even if the books we revered were ridiculed in their time but went on to mark the period in which they were published. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was laughed off the Parisian stage and yet it’s one of his most memorable plays.

How could one predict which stories will endure? We were arrogant to think we could.

Much of the vitriol toward Gilbert was rooted in our jealousy of her success and the fact that our weird little books didn’t reach as large of an audience. We were privy only to her success, not the lifelong struggle that accompanied it because people don’t want the ache, boredom, frustration, and pain — they crave the fairytale ending, the “after” photo. The one million copies sold.

People crave the fanfare and confetti of overnight success without realizing that it’s a myth. We were also frustrated that our culture was shifting from laboring over type to reality television; everyone became tethered to their devices, which morphed into phantom limbs. We were no longer flesh, we were plastic, paper, and steel. Pay no mind people have been bemoaning low culture since Shakespeare. Pay no attention to the fact that us literary types tinkered with our phones at book parties and readings.

In a 1978 interview with Rolling Stone, Susan Sontag rallied against the mythical divide between high and low culture. For her, there were no high/low, right/wrong books, rather we needed to absorb the totality of experience to create meaningful work. Sontag said,

“I really believe in history; that’s something people don’t believe in anymore. I have very few beliefs, but this is certainly one: that most everything we think of as natural is historical and has roots — specifically in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, the so-called Romantic revolutionary period. We’re still essentially dealing with expectations and feelings formulated at that time.

So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate and am tuned in better because I’ve read Nietzsche.”

This isn’t to say that Elizabeth Gilbert is low brow, this is more about us judgy-judgy-was-a-bear types who held a myopic world view. We forgot those whom we revered created their work not in a vacuum, but in observation of the world around them. Most of the writers we treasured barely finished high school, much less attended boldfaced universities and graduate schools that cost more than luxury homes.

It took me a long time to change, to see that all work is worthy regardless of the writer or genre. That, if a work of art, whether it be literature, sculpture, or video moves someone, changes the weight and shape of their day, who cares about the content of that work? Who cares if it’s not about the “big” things — big being that which is wholly subjective.

Even now I fight the knee-jerk impulse to judge people’s art. Old habits and like that. But I remind myself that we need balance and contrast. We need our world to be complex, strange, insufferable and interesting for it to be remarkable.

I’m reminded of that Twilight Zone episode, “Mind Over Matter,” where a curmudgeonly man, Archibald Beechcroft, uses his mind to rid the world of people. And when he populates New York with photocopies of himself (because he can only truly tolerate fellow Archibald Beechcrofts), his vision that comes to pass startles him. A world filled with copies is an insufferable one, and in the end, he returns the reality to what it was — even if it annoys him.

It took me years to enjoy low-brow without guilt, and it took me even longer to realize that if someone pours their heart into their work it doesn’t matter if it’s a pink book jacket or a dark one — what matters is that someone saw a story through. Because who really finishes anything? It’s noble to admire a fellow writer who’s able to write that book in small pockets of time during the day, and it’s cowardly to admonish them for the kind of work they produce. If someone writes a mass-market thriller and it gives a reader joy, who am I to take that away?

What right do I have to judge the worth of someone else’s labor?

Now, I read thrillers, suspense, beach reads, literary fiction, historical fiction, scientific non-fiction, and believe me when I say that consumption the breadth of work has made me a better, and more compassionate writer. There’s much to be learned when we leap out of our safe, confined sandbox.

Once I read a post by Dr. Andrew Weil, on why he likes to cook — the alchemy of imagination and creation:

“There is another reward of cooking that fascinates and motivates me: it is excellent training in practical magic. By that I mean that cooking gives you a chance to practice the esoteric art of manifestation — bringing something from the imagination into physical reality.”

It’s not about plating or cookbooks or competitions — Weil simply cares about creating something from nothing, and there’s nobility in that simple, tactile truth.

If you would’ve asked me twenty years ago if I would’ve written an essay inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert, I would’ve thought you insane, however, Big Magic is a treasure. I like it because it’s simple, honest. Most self-help books focus on a platform and use jargon that serves only to distance the writer from the reader, invariably making me feel empty and sold-to. With Gilbert, I felt as if she were in my home, whispering words of courage in my ear. Take your work seriously, but please do not take yourself seriously.

While my novel won’t cure cancer, maybe it’ll make someone feel less alone in the world.

And about that elusive success? No one really enjoys insane fame and fortune and if that’s your motivation to create art, you really need to think about your life. Even if we’re not going to win big, that doesn’t mean we completely take ourselves out of the game. In Joan Didion’s novel, Play it as it Lays, BZ folds. And even though the game is rigged and L.A. is a wasteland, Maria keeps on playing.

Because of Kate, because why not?

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert shares her insights, tools, and stories on how we can truly live our most creative life. Fear? Have it come along for the ride but never let it take the wheel. Perfection? It doesn’t exist, rather focus on being done. The tortured artist? Stop this nonsense. Who wants to consciously inflict pain on ourselves? Gilbert shares how one can be confident, inspired, and passionate about their work and generating ideas. And even though I’m in my late 40s and have published two books with an agent and traditional publisher, I still found her words inspiring.

A yoga teacher once told me that the mark of an advanced practitioner is someone who doesn’t have an ego about returning to a basics class. The advanced yogi re-learns a downward-facing dog. An advanced yogi knows the hardest pose isn’t handstand, but savasana. We never stop learning, and sometimes it’s important to return to the fundamentals, and I feel as if Gilbert delivers that through the lens of someone who tells stories.

“This is a world, not a womb. You can look after yourself in this world while looking after your creativity at the same time — just as people have done for ages.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

Up until five years ago, I cared what strangers thought of me. I was wounded when they hated my writing or me. I was hurt when former coworkers unfollowed me on social media, friends unsubscribed from my newsletter. And then it occurred to me that it took a lot of time and energy shouldering other people’s opinions of me and my work.

People will always find a reason to pull out their scalpel and perform their excisions. They’ll always hate something about you or what you do for a lot of reasons. Calling it jealousy would be simplistic and reductive because feedback is not always related to envy, but I realized I’m human and I’m flawed like everyone else. There are aspects of my personality that even I don’t like, so how do I even think that I’m able to control other’s opinions of me if I’m admittedly a work in progress? Did Elizabeth Gilbert care that people hated Eat Pray Love? No. She kept on working.

I don’t care if people have misconceptions of me, hate me or my work. I’m working on a new essay collection and who knows if it’ll sell, but I’m writing it anyway. I write things here that people dislike. I’m allergic to cliques or community — I like my wolf pack small and private, populated with people I trust. I block who I want to without abandon. You don’t like it? I don’t care. I owe you nothing.

Here’s what I care about:

I care about putting the best work I can out into the world. I spent over two and a half years on my novel and I learned so much from the process, and that won’t be erased by the fact that a handful of people bought it. What matters is that I created something I loved; I saw a story through. I care about being a devoted friend to the people in my life — I hold myself accountable to them. And if I’m not being a good person or friend, I rely on the people whom I love to give me that feedback. I take that which is constructive to work on getting better because we’re always learning and growing, and I can’t spend my time on people who will never like me regardless of how hard I try.

All I can do is keep writing, keep learning, keep moving and see what happens. Shuffle the cards and play them as they lay.