Christopher Buckley Fame & Fortune, or, I am not Christopher Buckley
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own deep, in the darkest part of the heart, no matter how modest we have become or profess to be, doesn't every writer-woken in the middle of the night for an immediate Yes or No-wish for Fame? The most selfless, the most resigned to Fate, the most given to ars gratia artis, would gladly accept some recognition. Or so I believe after more than twenty-five years' labor in the proverbial fields. What happens when the spotlight glances off the lapels of the glamorous and God-blessed, picks us out one time standing in the back, hoisting our metaphorical spears? Don't we gasp, straighten our ties, check our hair, and let ourselves believe a bit of that stardust might fall on our foreheads, and, against all better judgment and experience, change our lives? Answer the phone one time expectantly, open the letter mentally rolling the bones as if everyone were due a lucky break, and you're done for. It's almost genetic, systemic, buried in the blood, tugging us away from logic, realistic appraisal, and the plain hard facts of the work being its own reward. Fame, a crumb or the whole loaf, is something we desire even when we say we don't, even when we know it doesn't really mean a thing-spiritually, metaphysically, aesthetically. Just once, we'd like to lay our cards down in the light and clear the table. Most poets I know go to the mailbox the way gamblers go to the casino, the way the hopeless or bereft go to church. Even if they say they don't. They do. Why else send it out? Why not put it all in a drawer with your freezer-burned heart, thereby eliminating all prospects the way that Emily Dickinson did? Given one extreme or the other, most would choose Walt Whitman's route-self-publish and proclaim yourself wondrous before the burning and indifferent universe, the irresolute press. No one likes loser-clubbers, whiners who begrudge the good their due. We can't all be stars, logic would dictate. Some writers are tiresome, a host are passable, and even sometimes the truly exceptional are rewarded. Yet marketing and celebrity in America account for most everything-in Hollywood, on Wall Street, or on Main Street. We hate to hear it but who you know and/or do lunch with counts for a good deal. Imagine that. The same obtains in politics, selling T-shirts, or selling off the national wilderness to selected oil and mining concerns. My favorite line from Louis Malle's marvelous film, "Atlantic City" is-"We don't do business with people we don't do business with." From the department of redundancy department, but true. Beyond that, there's just no telling why some are tapped on the shoulder by the angel of Fame and given the whole glittering nine yards-no matter the substance of the writing, or the lack thereof-and others are not. As a beginning writer, you're up against it. 102
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