By CARL HEINTZE
I've been thinking of things I'll never accomplish in my lifetime. Like publishing the Great American Novel. It's not that I haven't written the Great American Novel. I've written it not once, but several times. It's just that somehow no agent, editor or publisher has ever recognized any of my efforts to become the new Hemingway.
Actually, I'm not so sure I want to be the new Hemingway. The old one had four wives and a lot of girlfriends, drank too much and was a manic-depressive. I'd like to skip all that personal stuff and just get published.
Alas, in the spirit of Hemingway, the content of a writer's life these days seem almost as important as what he or she writes. Norman Mailer, for instance who once thought of himself as the new Hemingway, has also had several wives (I've lost count), lots of kids, all of whom he has had to support, and been at various times in trouble with the law, other writers and the government. Lately he seems to be more of a nag than a menace.
William Styron, another recognized American writer, has suffered depressive stages in his life, though he seems all right at the moment. So maybe mental imbalance is part of being the Great American Novelist.
Alas, as someone once told me, "You're level-headed."
I think that translates to dull and unexciting.
American writers also seem to fade after they reach middle age. Sinclair Lewis, for example, was a house afire when he first published, with Main Street and Babbit to his early credit. But the more he wrote, the worse he got. Oh, yes, and he had trouble with his wives, too, and ended up living in Europe writing books that were, to put it politely, dogs. I never faded in middle age because I never blossomed into print. I guess it is too late now to either blossom or fade.
Thus, being a great writer seems to mean living a life of great travail. I've often wondered what with all the troubles these guys had and the amount of alcohol they consumed (William Faulkner, for instance, only had one wife and one daughter, but he went on periodic epic binges) how they ever managed to write anything.
I suppose the secret is that when they wrote, they wrote well. Wonderfully well. They just didn't do it very often. It came in short inspired bursts.
What's more, almost no artist has any control of what he or she writes, composes or paints.
Writers especially seem to have to contend with this problem. That's because publishing lies not in the hands of the writer but with the publisher, who makes a living by trying to guess what the public is going to buy once it's printed.
When you think about it, this is probably a good idea. Hardly any writer has the vaguest idea about whether his or her writing is 1) good, 2) worth publishing or 3) salable.
It's always a surprise when someone compliments me on something I've written that I've forgotten or didn't like when I wrote it.
It's equally surprising how readers tend to like things of yours you hate. They seldom like what you like, that piece you treasure, haul out every so often to read in secret and can almost recite from memory. I have a few of those myself. Great pieces, even if not a soul but me thinks so.
So the road toward being a great writer is a bumpy one, and it is one not traveled by very many. It also seems a road with a price on it, a price not all of us are prepared to pay.
Maybe that's my excuse for not making the front page of the New York Times Book Review section. Instead of having multiple wives, being a little off balance mentally and have a big appetite for booze, I've only had one wife, my alcohol intake is limited because I was raised by a Methodist grandmother who thought drinking a cardinal sin (I still have qualms every time I take a drink of hard liquor) and I have yet to live a life riotous and to excess.
If I'm going to do so, I'd better hurry.
Meantime, let me tell you the plot of my next and, of course, greatest novel.
Carl Heintze is a free-lance contributor to The Sun.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, September 18, 1996.
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