Would You Rather Be a Forgotten Success or an Immortal Failure?

The (fictional) Salieri vs. Mozart dilemma

Amadeus (1984)

There’s a question I like to ask people: would you rather be successful in life but forgotten afterwards, or die thinking you failed but become famous posthumously?

The classic cinematic posing of this question is Amadeus, which also uncoincidentally inspired the name of this Substack. In the movie, it’s the protagonist, Salieri, who enjoys the illustrious career—with all the prizes and courtly acclaim and invitations into prestigious circles—while his rival Mozart is less successful. By the end, Mozart has been cast out to crass and unfashionable music scenes while Salieri continues to thrive among the in-crowd.

The film is historically bogus, of course (though extremely entertaining bogus). The first time I watched it, I was around 6 years old, having first begun piano lessons. It was perfect timing. And the ending always hit me hard: the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem in full heaving swell as his body sack is unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave in the outskirts of Vienna on a bleak, rainy day.

Yet even in tragedy, the audience knows that the villain Salieri will ultimately get his comeuppance because history will adore Mozart much more than him. Many will even get the sense that, despite Mozart’s short and underappreciated life, they’d rather be him than Salieri. Who wouldn’t want to be remembered throughout history?¹

Going back to my initial question, the sensible answer is the first one: to succeed in life. What is the purpose of life if not to enjoy it to the fullest, which includes garnering admiration and financial rewards? There’s no guarantee of an afterlife, or if there is one, who says our heavenly souls would even know or care about what’s happening on Earth, which will inevitably get swallowed up by a supernova?

But when I ask myself that question, I say I’d rather be remembered beyond my death, that I can withstand the resulting disappointments, jealousies, and bitterness during life. I’d guess a lot of writers and artists would too. Art is a peculiar field where posthumous reputation can matter as much, or even more, than reputation during one’s lifetime. Most other spheres of life aren’t as conducive to this type of thinking. Nobody romanticizes having a failed business that, long after his death, will be held up as having been ahead of its time. Imagine a promising athlete who’d prefer being a misused role-player instead of a superstar because only after she is worm fodder will her once unorthodox skillset be coveted in an evolved game.

World leaders and parents also engage in this type of long-term thinking. Martyrs too, which is befitting of the self-aggrandizement many artists are guilty of.

Many of us like to tell others and ourselves that it’s our art that matters most, that we don’t really care about the fleeting contemporaneous rewards that don’t have a good track record of recognizing true worth anyway. But our actions betray our lofty words. If you truly were thinking big-picture, you’d hardly ever feel pettily aggrieved at somebody else’s seemingly undeserved triumph because in the long run, who cares? For writers, all those great books we cherish from long ago were not always the bestselling or buzziest ones of their year. So why should we be so myopic in the present day?

But no matter what we claim, we do want to be loved and celebrated and uplifted while we can actually experience it. Substack itself is a microcosm of this desire. The best and worst part of Substack is the instant feedback, which is almost always positive. In her amusingly scathing piece,

Adria

did not hold back: “In my weary moments of cringing at the Notes feed, watching people pander to one another in disingenuous bids for likes, I do try to pause and give grace as needed. I remind myself that maybe Substack is to Gen Alpha what Xanga and Tumblr were to millennials—a digital playground where we bared our souls, oblivious to how much we’d cringe at our own words years later.”²

You can spend years on a novel and have little to show for it, even if you do get it published. In contrast, a piece on Substack means immediate likes, comments, readers, and even new real-life friends. Your subscriber count becomes a soothingly quantifiable reminder that your writing matters to X number of people.

Positive reinforcement is necessary in sustaining a literary culture. But can it also hinder great literature? Can it even make you regress as a writer? People want to be known as superb novelists, essayists, short story writers, journalists, and poets. Nobody wants to just be known as a great Substacker. But I also don’t think it’s exactly an either/or proposition.

Still, I sometimes worry that the breakneck speed that this platform incentivizes slowly eats away at our writerly verve, causing us to spill out little by little what could’ve instead been saved up for something more monumental. If nothing else, I fear we may all lose (what little) mystique we may have once had as writers. Too much communication can be a bad thing. Just look at the NBA and the proliferation of player podcasts.³

If I’m guilty of putting writers on a pedestal, then so be it. I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t think highly of the art and craft. For instance, I think it’s charming and delightful when Youtubers celebrate reaching a subscriber total. I can’t stand seeing it on Substack, though.⁴

It’s tempting to yearn for historic relevance because those famous figures live so vibrantly in our minds. But these people are just inventions we’ve made up in our heads, even if we do love their actual works. We alter and customize them into our imaginary friends who speak our slang, share our political sympathies, and totally get us when we feel so misunderstood by the rest of the world. No wonder so many people are devastated and enraged when it turns out that their artistic idols probably wouldn’t have been their bestest best friends.

There’s a great scene in Whiplash where the protagonist, Andrew, gets into an argument with his family about how successful Charlie Parker was. His dad and relatives think Parker was a failure because he died alone and of a heroin overdose in his 30s. Andrew disagrees, saying that being regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the century makes Parker a success. We’re meant to think Andrew’s a bit of a psycho in this scene with bizarre priorities and overcompensating for the fact that nobody likes him. But then again, we also think, ‘Wouldn’t it be really cool if people talked about me like they do Charlie Parker (or any other legend in whatever field)? Maybe OD’ing at 34 might be kind of worth it…’

The desire to succeed as soon as possible is the desire to consume and savour every calorie of success so that we may engorge ourselves on it before we wither away into old age, then ashes, then atoms.

Jared Young

recently wrote a great piece about the sadness of realizing that one is now well past the age of ever being crowned a great young writer.⁵ In his piece, he says a youthful flawed work is still more valued than one of superior quality by an older writer, because ultimately, it is not the art we are actually coveting, but the tantalizing thrill of potential.

This anxiousness seems to be prevalent right now. Was it something about the shortened, cold February air? I enjoyed reading

Catherine Lacey

’s reply to a letter by a 29-year old writer who was worried that despite a decade-plus of writing, she would die with nothing to show for it.⁶ I also enjoyed the piece by

Lucie Eleanor

, who’s still a very young writer but nevertheless expresses concerns about running out of time, which she points out feel even more acute for women for whom many things move at an accelerated timeline compared to men.⁷

But if we truly cared only about the everlasting quality of our work, we wouldn’t care whether we succeeded when we were young or old (or whether we supposedly succeeded at all). If anything, we’d be suspicious of early praise and accolades because if we had any respect for our art, we’d know that it takes time, experience, and repetition to perfect it. How many novels have you read by hotshot young writers that make you think, ‘If only they’d written this maybe a decade later…’ We only get one shot at writing the book we want to write. It’s a genuine loss for everyone when it’s rushed out. But maybe the parties and press tours were worth it.

And let’s not kid ourselves: the possibility of receiving that kind of ego gratification is a big part of the appeal of being a writer, even if they’re much more subdued than the heyday of the 1980s and 1990s. I recently met Walter Kirn at a literary event and was flabbergasted when he told me what he earned as a book reviewer in the 1990s.

In Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., the protagonist Nate notices how much more popular with women he gets when he starts to accumulate bylines, which he finds both titillating and repulsive. When he finally becomes a published novelist and embarks on his tour, he is in a new relationship, which he finds surprisingly happy to be in, seeing as how he’d always looked forward to being single when his big moment arrived. Whether you’re a man or woman, straight or gay, who wouldn’t want to shoot up a hotness tier or two because of your work?

I’m curious what the unseen years in Amadeus would’ve been like, between Mozart’s death and Salieri’s institutionalization. At some point, he must’ve realized that Mozart’s reputation was going to eclipse his, and that he’d even supercharged that process by semi-murdering him. But maybe he got to enjoy several years, perhaps even decades, as the toast of the town. He’d get to enjoy all the desserts he ever wanted. Maybe he even broke his vow of chastity (he hated God now, after all) and finally got laid with some sexy prima donna. How would those happy years stack up against whatever joy, if any, Mozart felt and still feels, knowing we still cherish his music today?

I’ve been thinking about this question more as I’m nearing completion of my novel. I’m hoping to finish by the spring equinox. At the absolute latest, by end of April. Obviously, there’ll be extensive revisions and that will take up a lot of time. But the finishing of a first draft is always a milestone. For almost a decade and a half, I’ve been working on a book, either this one or the one before. Always having such a grand project has been like traveling with a comforting companion. No matter how low I felt, I had something tangible and wildly ambitious to hang onto and dream about.

It hasn’t come without costs, though. I’ve never been fully engaged at my day jobs and my career is middling, at best. I’ve discovered I like writing at night, so in trying to finish this novel, I’ve had to give up the gym (not to mention the increased drinking and smoking) because no way am I waking up early on a workday to work out. My personal life has suffered too because the neuroses that fuel the incessant need to write also poison the chances of happy and long-lasting relationships. In another life where I didn’t have this incessant need to write, I may have a family by now (I’m now at an age where I’m increasingly aware that each passing year is one less year that my parents won’t have with their potential grandchildren).

I’ll be glad when this first draft is done, though it’ll feel starkly different than when I finished the first draft of my first novel many years ago. Back then, it marked the start of something mesmerizingly new with endless possibilities. This time, it will be more like a satisfying rest after a very long journey. I have no intentions right now to start a new novel, no matter what happens with this one. I’m tempering any expectations because, as

Naomi Kanakia

wrote: “Nothing is more common than for a book to be ignored. You don't need to come up with any special theory to account for a particular author not breaking out, because not-breaking-out is the default state of all careers.”⁸

But Naomi also wrote about feeling part of a literary clique for the first time, an experience I relate to as well. I’ve been in writing groups before, and I have trusted writer friends with whom I frequently chat. Yet those groups were random assemblies, and those writerly friends are scattered across this continent. Until recently, I’ve never got to know what it was like to have one’s social circle merge with one’s literary interests. More so than anything else, I’ve wanted a cultural home and while it’s premature to say that I’ve found it, I’m certainly closer to it than ever before.

So I’ve been asking myself the central question of this piece more, whether I truly mean it when I say I put more stock in the unforeseen longevity of my work rather than immediate glory. Like everyone, I feel jealousy and bitterness regarding peers, so I’m not fully above it. But if I can have a vibrant social circle of interesting writers, a meaningful readership, and (hopefully) a published book floating out there (even if it doesn’t explode out of the gate, who knows what may become of it one day), I think I can be happy with that.

A decade-plus of stubborn toiling, satisfactorily rewarded. And many more decades of writing left ahead, to be sure. I once told an anxious young writer friend of mine that we had the rest of our lives to write the book that we wanted to write. But soon, at least for a little while, I hope I can step back a bit and finally focus more on the other neglected aspects of my life.

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My review of Stuart Ross’ The Hotel Egypt was recently published in

The Metropolitan Review

. What happens in relationships when the woman is more successful than the man? And should we strive for soulmates who share our same hopes and dreams, or is it better that opposites attract?

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1. A few months ago, I went on a first date with a woman who was the first person I’ve ever met who’s ever identified more with Mozart than Salieri. I found her confidence alluring.

2. Substack Won’t Make You A Great Writer by Adria | Open Jaw

3. I was in Philly for much of The Process era, and I will forever hate Ben Simmons, the cadre that pushed Sam Hinkie out, Doc Rivers, and now, Paul George for ruining Joel Embiid for whom I’ll always have a soft spot for.

4.

wayback machine

, your funny Notes on this are much appreciated

5. YOUTH by Jared Young | Tolstoyan

6. Can you bet it all on your novel? by Catherine Lacey | Untitled Thought Project

7. you have time. by Eleanor Lucie | Sublime Miscellany

8. Making a literary career during Trump’s second term by Naomi Kanakia | Woman of Letters