02.02.2018

A little while back, I read an article in a newspaper, possibly the Guardian, about a writer who had never made it and had never been published. The novels that this man had dedicated his life to, forgoing employment and the material things of life, were described as “execrable”, or some such choice word. Here was a Mr. Nobody who produced “artistic failures”. No one wanted to publish his writing. No one wanted to read his writing. Yet, day after day, Mr. Nobody sat at his desk and pushed out the words.

Mr. Nobody could be anyone. There are thousands of people in the same position: writers, poets, artists, singers and musicians. Certainly, Mr. Nobody is myself. One wonders, though, how Mr. Nobody can bear his numerous disappointments and the miscarriages of his babies in the world. Today I want to write a little piece about this artistic failure and disappointment. I regard artistic failure as a lack of recognition. The reader will forgive this narcissistic exploration. Chekov wrote that it is only a mediocre novelist that goes on and on about writing a novel, not the successful writer. So be it, yet even the mediocre novelist must have an opinion and reflect upon his or her failures and successes.

The story is a common one. After years of publishing creative work in student newspapers and magazines as a young man, I thought, optimistically, that the next step would surely be publication with a serious publisher. I expected the wider world to take note of what I had published in the student publications. I sent off my poetry to magazines and publishing houses like Faber and Faber. I tried to get my short stories published in American magazines. I applied for book reviewing and journalistic positions. The result? Rejection after rejection. Gradually, I stopped sending my stuff out to companies and applying for work. I published online, thus cutting off any potential revenue from my work. Now, my poetry was up on my blog and I found out that poetry publishers wouldn’t publish work that had already featured online. The amount of readers that I had could be counted on one hand. It was the same thing with my short stories and book reviews. I put the music that I had composed and sang to online. When it was my own original music, perhaps twenty people would listen to my songs at most. I took up art about two years ago and post work on my Instagram account. The work has generated zero income and I have never managed to go over seventy likes on a picture.

Having reached middle age, it is clear that I am an artistic failure. Like Mr. Nobody, my creative work has never been published, has never generated any revenue and is read, listened to and seen by only a small handful of people. I have not received real recognition for my work. Producing this creative work, which costs money and takes up time when I could be earning money is therefore something of Sisyphean enterprise. Like the Ancient Greek character, I push the boulder up the mountain every time I sit at my desk to produce anything and it never gets anywhere. How does a person bear the constant disappointment and frustration? How does he or she bear the indifference and apathy of the general public which would tend to suggest that these cultural productions are worthless?

These questions have been considered by creative thinkers in the past. I recently read a short story about the issue called “Enoch Soames” by Max Beerbohm which was first published in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1916). Enoch is a poet who does not get the attention that he feels he deserves. His belief in his work, however, is undying. He therefore makes a pact with the devil to travel into the future because he is convinced that his work is ahead of its time and will be revered by future readers. He thus stakes his soul on his belief in his work since this is the devil’s fee. However, on arriving into the future, Enoch finds that he is still a Mr. Nobody. Beerbohm’s story reflects a somewhat delusional belief which keeps a Mr. Nobody going. Mr. Nobody believes that, if not today, then maybe tomorrow there will be the attention and the notice. Mr. Nobody lives in a strange world of time, chance and happening, much like the lottery ticket buyer. After all, Mr. Nobody has read the rubbish which is published everywhere and which is popular. He’s seen the hacks claiming the prime place in the affections of people. Mr. Nobody knows that it is a just a question of luck and the capricious and fickle whims of the public. It is not what is of value that is valued. What is of value is frequently discarded to the rubbish pile of history while that which is worthless is heralded as brilliant and daring. The darlings of the public are not infrequently mountebanks and monsters. Mr. Nobody therefore, irresistibly, inevitably, sets himself at defiance to the world. He stands in contempt of this world. This contempt hardens Mr. Nobody’s strict belief in himself. Mr. Nobody says to himself each and every morning “It does not matter if none believe in me. For I am only to believe in myself and everything will follow”.

After all, Mr. Nobody does not just model himself on Sisyphus, but also models himself on Cassandra. Cassandra was cursed to speak words of truth that none would believe. If her words of prophecy had been listened to and followed, Troy would not have fallen to the Greeks. Mr. Nobody believes in the value of what he expresses. If, one day, Mr. Nobody is to be recognised as someone who was saying something of value, then he believes it is the misfortune of others not to have heard his voice. Mr. Nobody believes that in frustrating his expression and his voice, which is only fully expressed in the presence of an audience, the public is hurting itself.

Such is the ego and the arrogance of a Mr. Nobody. Ego is the apt word because one thinks of how Sigmund Freud divided up the work of the different components of subjectivity. Ego would produce and produce. It had a limitless creativity and spontaneity. However, the superego guarded the gates of expression. It would sit in judgement of what ego had written and censor the material, not allowing certain things past the gate. Mr. Nobody is the ultimate version of the ego while the public, as ever, is the superego. Mr. Nobody wants ego to prevail and burst through every attempt at resistance. Mr. Nobody does not believe in “compromise”, the word that Sigmund Freud picked out for the repressive mechanism of the superego. And, one wonders, without the arrogance of the ego, would creative work be possible? In the creative work, the human being says “I am and I am beautiful”. The creative human being is not just arrogant but a narcissist. And where the creative being does not assert that claim, then, says Mr. Nobody, that creative being has failed. If creative work is not the expression of self, it is nothing. But what of it? For, of course, Mr. Nobody is neither published, read, or listened to. Where Mr. Nobody is concerned, the world blind and deaf. And these are the artistic failures of a Mr. Nobody.