I think that my previous post tried to bite off slightly more than it could chew. I was trying to bring together a few different strands of ideas, and I’m not sure that I managed it successfully, so this a short follow-up which is hopefully a little clearer.
I also saw two posts that disproved my parenthetical speculation that writers with large subscriber bases were less likely to worry about the tensions between art and commerce. Feel free to skip my post and just read either of these, but I will attempt to explain why they prompt me to recommend The Gift.
Let’s imagine I turn back to deep writing only. I will publish only occasionally, maybe once a month. I will not have enough writing to support a paid offering, and I will lose the little orange check mark by my name. *A shiver of fear runs down her spine.* I can only guess that my limited Substack activity and lack of paid offering will cause my newsletter to be far less widely circulated, which is the primary way I find new readers. *She shudders.* Perhaps my newsletter will…*gasp*…no longer grow at all. I would be breaking all the known rules of the game.
Thursday was a bad day for me, and I think Substack is partially to blame for that. In recent months I’ve become increasingly excited by the support I’ve received here, by the new readers who are arriving daily, by the knowledge that my books are now being read in Virginia and Oregon and India and New Zealand and Poland and New South Wales and South Korea…. It feels like the opposite of selling your book via your big opinion-churning zeitgeist mouth or some influential friends who didn’t read your book but said something flippantly positive about it publicly. I go to the post office every day and send my books to these far-flung places where my Substack subscribers live then hear from the people who receive them and it feels utterly undeniable. I think, “Maybe this long cut I have taken, all this work, is finally paying off?” But Thursday put everything into perspective. Thursday was the day I received my latest royalty payment from my publishers. I won’t tell you what the figures were because that’s not what I do, nor what I was brought up to do. I will, however, say this much … that groundswell [of word-of-mouth sales] is not yet making itself known on a spreadsheet in the offices of my publishers or literary agent.
Reading both of those, it’s clear that both authors know what they want — to make a statement to the world (and their followers) about what it is that they value in their own writing, and to make clear that the wrestle with trying to balance the their own desires with the standard definitions of “success.” (Tom is more pugnacious in asserting his own hard-won sense of purpose; Rachel explicit about the ways that Substack specifically rewards certain choices and styles).
It’s a reminder that part of what makes The Gift successful is that it isn’t a book of advice or instructions. In the last post I quoted a passage which is one of the clearer examples of him making a specific argument. But much of the book is language like this:
" That art that matters to us — which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received. Even if we have paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall, when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which has nothing to do with the price. I went to see a landscape painter’s works, and that evening, walking among pine trees near my home, I could see the shapes and colors I had not seen the day before. The spirit of an artist’s gifts can wake our own. "
The book tries to accomplish something similar; showing patterns in the world with the hope that the reader will step away and see those patterns themselves — see all of the ways in which the emotional pull (and cultural presence) of art and creativity exist separate from and in tension with the market (as I quoted in my first post, “The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace.”).
He also makes clear that he isn’t just writing about fine art, but all of the ways in which people organize themselves to provide meaning and support and community.
It is also the case that a gift may be the actual agent of change, the bearer of new life. In the simplest examples, gifts carry an identity with them, and to accept the gift amounts to incorporating the new identity. It is as if such a the gift amounts to incorporating the new identity. It is as if such a gift passes through the body and leaves us altered. The gift is not merely the witness or guardian to new life, but the creator. I want to speak of “teachings” as my primary example here. I do not mean schoolbook lessons, I mean those infrequent lessons in living that alter, or even save, our lives. I once worked for several years as a counselor to alcoholics in the detoxification ward of a city hospital. During those years I naturally became acquainted with Alcoholics Anonymous. AA provides a “program of recovery” for alcoholics that makes a good example of the sort of teaching gift I have in mind.
So the lessons I take from the book, and am hoping connect with other people on Substack are (1) that it is not unusual to feel a tension between artistic and commercial goals and each writer has to navigate that tension for themselves, but the challenge is common for almost everyone working in the arts (2) we don’t need to see it as a purely individual problem. If part of the concern is that people want their work to find an audience, we can be alert to all of the ways that people on substack can encourage and support each other, help people find an audience, and offer validation and approval which doesn’t necessarily match subscriber badges.
Closing with a song, this is the first John Hartford song I heard. He is a great example of someone figuring out what motivated them. He wrote “Gentle On My Mind”, a hit for Glenn Campbell and covered by dozens of other singers, and
Hartford often said that Gentle On My Mind bought his freedom.
He used that freedom to explore his various creative curiosities, and was usually happy to take his friends along on the trip. . . .
John Hartford became mentor and mystic for a generation of pickers, singers, and songwriters. His landmark record, Aereo-plain (1971) documented his work with Vassar Clements, Norman Blake, and Tut Taylor. Rooted firmly in tradition but sprouting at the top with hippie hair, the group’s instrumental mastery and free-wheeling style bridged a musical gap between traditional bluegrass and a progressive new audience, making every song a cult favorite and every live performance the thing of legend. According to Sam Bush, “Without Aereo-plain, there would be no ‘newgrass’ music.”
In 1976, John won another Grammy award for his contemporary folk masterpiece, Mark Twang. The album featured a set of quirky river-centric original songs, presented in stripped down arrangements, typically featuring only Hartford accompanying himself on banjo, fiddle, or guitar while tapping his feet on an amplified sheet of plywood. The combination was magical, and would become his trademark sound for many years as a solo act.
John Hartford — “Let Him Go On Mama”
Well Friday night he makes the best damn / Gumbo you'd ever want to eat / And Saturday morning 'fore everyone's up / He's gone off down to the fleet
[Chorus] He's just a feller worked on the river / All his life by a paddle wheel / You say he's old fashioned / Well that ain't no big deal
The song is a tribute to someone who knows what brings them satisfaction.
As a Hartford fan, I truly appreciate you tying this song in with your work. I think it's ok for us to not know why we've arrived here. Figuring it out, even in small ways, I think is the point. We'll always have Hartford to guide!
I enjoyed this and the related posts. I held back from commenting earlier because I needed a bit more time to read and reflect and then I struggled to formulate a productive response. I decided against my initial impulase to comment with a 'why I do Substack the way I do' reply because that seemed too reductive or solipsistic. As I've yet to come up with something that I think would be insightful about how others use the platform, I'll just say that your own reflections *are* insightful and thought-provoking, and that the kind of things you've been talking about are ones I think about quite often, but without reaching any clear answers. I haven't read *The Gift* but am tempted to do so now. Thank you for these posts.