The Incredible Sucker-Punch of Success
Writers talk about failure a lot. They gather together to talk about the long roads they had to hoe in order to get their books published. They talk about the inevitable rejection letters, which arrive and keep on arriving and do not let up if you are doing your job remotely correctly. We like the failure, as an audience. If plays to our twisted little perceptions that all artists must be punished for doing what they do. Greatness? Commercial success? All perfectly acceptable as long as it’s causing you pain, you filthy wine-swilling arty-boy. DON’T YOU DARE BE HAPPY OR PROUD OF YOUR WORK, OR WE WILL CUT YOU. Sorry. Flashback. But it happens. We feel threatened by happy artists and immediately move to villify them for the crime of being arty and well-adjusted at the same time. They get demonized the way…shit, I don’t know. Adam Sandler? Stephanie Meyer? Taylor Swift? (Do we still demonize Taytay, or has she