Great questions. I retired from a full time job a while ago so now I have a diverse set of projects and activities.
But while I was in the midst of a career I also had a good balance among work, family, and community. HOWEVER, it took me a long time to recognize and appreciate that balance. I had fairly frequent pangs of regret that I was not going "all-in" for my career.
So, part of the struggle for some people may be to recognize that they do in fact live a balanced life and be proud of and grateful for it. I wish I had appreciated my balance much sooner than I did.
Thank you, David. I wonder if you might have appreciated that balance sooner if you'd lived in Europe or South America? Totalizing attitudes about work seem less common there. Not sure if you follow the Planet Money podcast, but I enjoyed their report on why Europeans take so much more vacation time than Americans.
What an interesting set of questions! Even so I find myself thinking about an adjacent one--how among my peers and professors it was important to appear to work hard, but only in the right ways. I had a professor in grad school who NEVER closed the door to his office or turned off the light, so it seemed he was always around. But there was a lot of cache in doing a lot and making it look easy. The appearance of hard work has some nuance, I guess.
One of my colleagues referred to a similar phenomenon as "time macho." This was more characteristic of older male faculty, who came early and left late, perhaps because this was how their generation defined a superior work ethic. It is indeed difficult to turn off that awareness of how others perceive our work. I find some freedom from it as a private contractor, but it's too early to say whether I'll be able to scale that up enough to be a primary gig. There is a relentless playbook for this, too: perpetual content creation on social platforms (always marketing, all the time); grinding away at SEO strategies; always adding more features (a podcast, Instagram, Threads).
My business growth may be slower because I'm not throwing myself headlong into it, but I'd like it to grow at a pace that remains comprehensible to me. I compare it to building my garden fence last fall, how working slowly with hand tools gave me more time to correct mistakes, rather than drilling dozens of post holes only to discover that I'd messed up some part of the design.
In this, I like Bill McKibben's metaphors for the American economy and for what he calls the durable future. The American economy is like a racehorse that can accelerate to incredible speeds, but that has fragile limbs that can break or a delicate temperament. The durable future, he says, is more like a workhorse -- slow and steady, with a slower top speed but also the capacity for pulling through the muddy stretches. I'm trying to take that to heart.
Very insightful questions. And topical too: got through a busy period and now I can get back to Substack commenting.
In general, I feel like I've negotiated a few of these things successfully, although leaving the country was a part of it. I work at home so that way I can be around my daughter during those fundamental early years. But as a writer whose audience will always be Americans no matter where I go (unless I write in a different language) this demand for constant output you mentioned risks being very taxing on a writer; although compared to YouTube influencers, writers are also a lot luckier. I think this is why American writers love their "Great American Novels" so much. It's tradition, to be sure, but it's also a chance to get as much as you can into a single book to satisfy a certain amount of "intellectual demand" upon the author. It's one of the few ways the relative unsaleability of novellas makes sense when it otherwise does not: after all they are shorter, less time-consuming and cheaper. Theoretically, then, they should be more popular, right? But for readers getting large amounts of either manual or office labor done, a novella feels underwhelming. A Great American novel, in contrast, strikes the average reader as a comparable accomplishment. It feels to the big business deal maker that it's at their level; the same with the guys who build a building. A skyscraper is a greater accomplishment than a roadside chapel, even if the chapel is much prettier; that understanding will be projected upon the novel as well.
As for the extremes, in a sense America has often been a country of extremes. But on the other hand, we also live in extreme times. I don't think how much there is to negotiate for those with only a little money and enormous costs. All I know is that if I had stayed, I'd probably be homeless by now.
Thank you, Felix. I was indeed mindful of the different pace and needs during my time in Prague. Same for my travels in Costa Rica. Although both places are being rapidly Westernized, bringing both the prospect of "greater" amenities and the relentless work required to sustain them. I'm not sure how germane the Great American Novel is to anyone anymore. That's not what commercial publishers are trying to produce. Market share trumps craft, nearly across the board.
I meant that term more when it comes to size, not genre. I don't think the Great American Novel is dead, however; it has simply been globalized, multiculturalized, Wokified; pick your adjective. As you said, the genre as understood traditionally is not germane: but I would argue it's old school Americanness that's become germane, not the impetus itself (or structure). Which makes sense: we deconstructed it with a smile on our faces. But while 1619 America might have filled the void of the liquidated 1776 America, it's still America. Our toponym is still Americans. And the need to ascertain Americanness still exists, as it always will. So if it's about America's essence, if it's big and if it's a novel: why shouldn't I call a big contemporary book by an American author a Great American Novel? Does it need to mention baseball, hot dogs, Elvis and cadillacs to qualify?
Of course your point is different, and more to do with the commercial side. I get that it's pointless to talk about differences like this if publishing is controlled by market shares and interests beyond our control. But at the end of the day they still have to sell something. And I think there's some value in that information. Something's being sold, and somebody's reading it.
Since the Czechs would say that they've always been a part of the West - and recently, Kundera's essay about The Kidnapped West was released in English translation talking about this very topic; I hope to write about it soon! - it would be more accurate to say that the former Eastern bloc is becoming Americanized culturally (or globalized, which is basically the same thing) while Germany tries to dominate the region economically, as it has with the rest of the EU. Basically, what you're referring to economically. But its genesis is very easy to track back to the US. And like TikTok does in America, we show a lot of the garbage side of our TV culture over here. Give it another one or two generations, and Czechs will basically be Americans. Already, increasing numbers want to become authors in English, not in their native language.
Hi Josh,
Great questions. I retired from a full time job a while ago so now I have a diverse set of projects and activities.
But while I was in the midst of a career I also had a good balance among work, family, and community. HOWEVER, it took me a long time to recognize and appreciate that balance. I had fairly frequent pangs of regret that I was not going "all-in" for my career.
So, part of the struggle for some people may be to recognize that they do in fact live a balanced life and be proud of and grateful for it. I wish I had appreciated my balance much sooner than I did.
Thank you, David. I wonder if you might have appreciated that balance sooner if you'd lived in Europe or South America? Totalizing attitudes about work seem less common there. Not sure if you follow the Planet Money podcast, but I enjoyed their report on why Europeans take so much more vacation time than Americans.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194467863/europe-vacation-holiday-paid-time-off
Will check it out. Thanks!
What an interesting set of questions! Even so I find myself thinking about an adjacent one--how among my peers and professors it was important to appear to work hard, but only in the right ways. I had a professor in grad school who NEVER closed the door to his office or turned off the light, so it seemed he was always around. But there was a lot of cache in doing a lot and making it look easy. The appearance of hard work has some nuance, I guess.
One of my colleagues referred to a similar phenomenon as "time macho." This was more characteristic of older male faculty, who came early and left late, perhaps because this was how their generation defined a superior work ethic. It is indeed difficult to turn off that awareness of how others perceive our work. I find some freedom from it as a private contractor, but it's too early to say whether I'll be able to scale that up enough to be a primary gig. There is a relentless playbook for this, too: perpetual content creation on social platforms (always marketing, all the time); grinding away at SEO strategies; always adding more features (a podcast, Instagram, Threads).
My business growth may be slower because I'm not throwing myself headlong into it, but I'd like it to grow at a pace that remains comprehensible to me. I compare it to building my garden fence last fall, how working slowly with hand tools gave me more time to correct mistakes, rather than drilling dozens of post holes only to discover that I'd messed up some part of the design.
In this, I like Bill McKibben's metaphors for the American economy and for what he calls the durable future. The American economy is like a racehorse that can accelerate to incredible speeds, but that has fragile limbs that can break or a delicate temperament. The durable future, he says, is more like a workhorse -- slow and steady, with a slower top speed but also the capacity for pulling through the muddy stretches. I'm trying to take that to heart.
Very insightful questions. And topical too: got through a busy period and now I can get back to Substack commenting.
In general, I feel like I've negotiated a few of these things successfully, although leaving the country was a part of it. I work at home so that way I can be around my daughter during those fundamental early years. But as a writer whose audience will always be Americans no matter where I go (unless I write in a different language) this demand for constant output you mentioned risks being very taxing on a writer; although compared to YouTube influencers, writers are also a lot luckier. I think this is why American writers love their "Great American Novels" so much. It's tradition, to be sure, but it's also a chance to get as much as you can into a single book to satisfy a certain amount of "intellectual demand" upon the author. It's one of the few ways the relative unsaleability of novellas makes sense when it otherwise does not: after all they are shorter, less time-consuming and cheaper. Theoretically, then, they should be more popular, right? But for readers getting large amounts of either manual or office labor done, a novella feels underwhelming. A Great American novel, in contrast, strikes the average reader as a comparable accomplishment. It feels to the big business deal maker that it's at their level; the same with the guys who build a building. A skyscraper is a greater accomplishment than a roadside chapel, even if the chapel is much prettier; that understanding will be projected upon the novel as well.
As for the extremes, in a sense America has often been a country of extremes. But on the other hand, we also live in extreme times. I don't think how much there is to negotiate for those with only a little money and enormous costs. All I know is that if I had stayed, I'd probably be homeless by now.
Thank you, Felix. I was indeed mindful of the different pace and needs during my time in Prague. Same for my travels in Costa Rica. Although both places are being rapidly Westernized, bringing both the prospect of "greater" amenities and the relentless work required to sustain them. I'm not sure how germane the Great American Novel is to anyone anymore. That's not what commercial publishers are trying to produce. Market share trumps craft, nearly across the board.
I meant that term more when it comes to size, not genre. I don't think the Great American Novel is dead, however; it has simply been globalized, multiculturalized, Wokified; pick your adjective. As you said, the genre as understood traditionally is not germane: but I would argue it's old school Americanness that's become germane, not the impetus itself (or structure). Which makes sense: we deconstructed it with a smile on our faces. But while 1619 America might have filled the void of the liquidated 1776 America, it's still America. Our toponym is still Americans. And the need to ascertain Americanness still exists, as it always will. So if it's about America's essence, if it's big and if it's a novel: why shouldn't I call a big contemporary book by an American author a Great American Novel? Does it need to mention baseball, hot dogs, Elvis and cadillacs to qualify?
Of course your point is different, and more to do with the commercial side. I get that it's pointless to talk about differences like this if publishing is controlled by market shares and interests beyond our control. But at the end of the day they still have to sell something. And I think there's some value in that information. Something's being sold, and somebody's reading it.
Since the Czechs would say that they've always been a part of the West - and recently, Kundera's essay about The Kidnapped West was released in English translation talking about this very topic; I hope to write about it soon! - it would be more accurate to say that the former Eastern bloc is becoming Americanized culturally (or globalized, which is basically the same thing) while Germany tries to dominate the region economically, as it has with the rest of the EU. Basically, what you're referring to economically. But its genesis is very easy to track back to the US. And like TikTok does in America, we show a lot of the garbage side of our TV culture over here. Give it another one or two generations, and Czechs will basically be Americans. Already, increasing numbers want to become authors in English, not in their native language.