"Thank You For Your Support." Wait, What Support?

When considering the "aspiring" writer's lot I think time and again of Jack London's Martin Eden--the truest depiction of that unhappy state that I have ever encountered in print--and often one particular aspect of that situation, its loneliness. This is not just a function of the fact that writing is a solitary and often isolating activity, but the way that others treat someone going about it when they have not "made it"--specifically their lack of empathy, sympathy and respect, and their sense that they have no obligation to be tactful, or even civil, about what they really think. There is, too, what all of this means if one ever does get anywhere, as Eden does--for he does "make it," becoming rich and famous, such that the multitude of people who knowing full well who he was would not have looked twice at the sight of him starving to death in the street now all want to have him over for dinner, or even marry their daughter.

So I suspect does it go online--even at the level of merely giving people an absolutely cost-less "like" or "share" on social media and those other platforms akin to it. A celebrity can get an outpouring of enthusiasm for uttering pure banality--while a nobody can scarcely hope for support no matter what they say, a mere click of the mouse that could mean a great deal in their position begrudged them. It is a testament to the shallowness of our online life--and the extreme stupidity of so many of those who people it. And experiencing it this way takes its toll. In Balzac's Lost Illusions Lucien de Rubempre, callow and ultimately ill-fated as he is, does realize some hard facts of life along the way before his final destruction, among them not only how scarce a sympathetic word or gesture can be for those who have not "succeeded" ("In the home circle, as in the world without, success is a necessity"), but the toll that even those who attain "success" are likely to pay before they get there. ("Perhaps it is impossible to attain to success until the heart is seared and callous in every most sensitive spot.")

In that there may be the tiny grain of truth in those stupid scenes of writers with supercilious looks on their faces as they autograph copies of their latest for fawning idiots--the praises cannot touch them, because if they had not long ago stopped caring what other people think they would have given it all up, perhaps as completely as Lucien does.