Frenemies and Nemeses
Who do you (not) love?
Before today’s post, a subscription offer for 📗ish - through July 31, with a yearly subscription or an upgrade from monthly to annual, subscribers receive an agent query letter critique or notes on the first page of a prose piece or a poem.
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This week’s guest on
podcast is essayist and cartoonist . About a third of the way through their conversation, they landed on the topic of artistic nemeses, and Daum mentioned a Substack essay Kreider published last month, “Nemesis,” which I read after listening to the episode. [One striking fact embedded in paragraph 4 that still has me reeling: David Lynch was asked to direct Return of the Jedi. (!!)]
As Kreider defines it, “[A] nemesis is someone whose artistic m.o.—their intentions, sensibilities, technique—are similar enough to your own that you understand what they’re up to well enough to call them on their bullshit, to spot when they’re being sloppy, dishonest, or lazy.”
Every writer I know experiences some degree of professional rivalry from time to time. It’s also a subject that comes up in most of the advanced fiction workshops I teach. “How do you/how can I/how do other writers deal with jealousy?” students have perennially asked.
Not well, in some cases.
In others, with grace and magnanimity. Admittedly, it takes a strong habit of mind to be magnanimous in these situations if you’re prone to thinking in zero sum terms, which seems to be the default mode for many of us.
Each day we’re fed a steady diet of scarcity narratives: the planet is running out of time. The oceans are being over-fished and filled with plastic and other toxic garbage. The world is being ruined, overrun, its fresh water supply dwindling disastrously. Someone else just sold a book eerily like your own. Someone else got the promotion you deserved. How not to feel as if there’s no room for you?
Several years ago, I was having lunch with a friend who is a teaching artist. We drifted onto the topic of the college where she was a faculty member. Her department chair was well known in the art world and interested in work that favored irony (and, less flatteringly, faddishness) over technical skill and precision, over mastery of tools and techniques. My friend expressed disappointment over the loss of interest among her students in acquiring the skills she had been taught to develop and cherish when she herself was a student.
Much of the art being elevated and included in the most prestigious shows and exhibitions, the Venice Biennale, for example, my friend noted, focused more on irony than on narrative precision and technical mastery. She admitted to feeling frustrated and disappointed by a lot of the work featured in that year’s Biennale—for which one of her colleagues was a curator.
I told her about a writer acquaintance of mine, someone I’d observed over the years with increasing irritation and dislike, someone who did not cheer on other writers’ successes if X perceived them to be a threat.
“How do you handle that?” my friend asked.
“If I acknowledge X’s successes publicly,” I said, “it’s usually easier for me to deal in private with any envy or frustration I feel.”
This isn’t easy—it’s kind of like swallowing the least appetizing medicine you’ve ever had to ingest. On some days I feel far from sanguine, having known X for a long time and only ever having conflicting feelings—our earliest interaction was characterized by X denigrating another writer, and subsequently, among other memorable incidents, by X boasting for two hours (literally) about awards X had almost won, famous writers X had exchanged emails with, literary institutions X had been invited to join.
X went on and on and on—it was, in retrospect, as tragicomic as it was enervating. I wanted to bolt, but we were at a professional engagement and so I sat and smiled through the hailstorm of X’s boasts and humble brags.
When I was finally able to flee, a terrible headache descended, one that lasted until the next day. (I’ve since learned that if someone grates on you to this extent, you should do what you can to avoid them.)
I wish I were always able to keep the raging X headache at bay, but X is very successful and a tireless self-promoter. On some days I see X’s name five to ten times—no hyperbole—in one place or another.
Sartre’s thesis in No Exit is “Hell is other people.” Learning how to ignore the people who most infuriate and irritate us can be infernally difficult.
It helps me to vent to sympathetic friends. (Ah, catharsis. And sometimes, comic relief when the stories of your nemeses and frenemies are especially outrageous.)
And to keep writing (and learning from the writers you most admire—in both the professional and personal spheres).
A couple of weeks ago, I posted advice here on Bookish from a number of prominent writers. The following counsel from Jeanette Winterson struck me as among the most valuable: “Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect,” and “Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward.”
Tim Kreider also has prudent advice: “[A] well-chosen nemesis can reduce you to suppurating self-pity and resentment at the capriciousness of fame and the tastelessness of the ovine masses, or they can act as a whetstone against which to hone your own intentions and ethos, clarifying what you want (and don’t want) to be, and maybe most importantly for anyone afflicted with ambition—what, if anything, matters more to you than success.”
And as the poet Roland Flint wrote in the poem “Prayer,” from his final collection Easy: “The work is all.” (He also wrote eloquently in “Late September, Early Morning” about another poet’s runaway success, a poem that appears in his collection Stubborn.)
I know X has demons too. I can’t believe anything else would spur X to behave in the ways X does.
Is this a comfort? Sometimes it is, yes. On my unhappiest days. (I won’t bother pretending otherwise.)
We all suffer, but how we choose to deal with our suffering, what punishments and betrayals we inflict on others, these are the things we can control. My partner once shared with me a Buddhism-derived precept I find alternately helpful and diabolical: “The people who bother us most are the ones with the most to teach us.” He said this, no surprise, after listening to me rant about X.
The lesson is ongoing and doubtless without end.
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This is soooooo spot on! It reminds me of the old "Life in Hell" comic by Matt Groening. He once did a mock publication called "Struggling Artist Magazine." One of the cover stories: "How to cope with reading about wildly successful artists who are younger than you." Plus the Gore Vidal axiom: "Everytime a friend succeeds I die a little." Praising other writers for success is natural--but so is the inner demon screaming "how come they get all the breaks????" I love this post and am sharing it!
Such thoughtful, smart advice. I'd add to it: never trust anyone with David Lynch's haircut.