Mad magazine used to run a feature called “Scenes We’d Like To See,” and the headline above is a scene I’d like to see, inspired by something pretty close.
There’s a talk coming up at the San Francisco JCC on March 11 called Fame, Oblivion, and the Writing Life.
The writer in question is the getting-less-obscure-all-the-time Isaac Rosenfeld — the boyhood friend of Saul Bellow’s whose great short story, “King Solomon,” was collected in Great Jewish Short Stories (edited by Bellow) and whose essays and stories were collected in Mark Shechner’s 1988 Preserving the Hunger, which has a preface by Bellow.
The JCC talk features Stanford University’s Steven Zipperstein, who recently published Rosenfeld’s Lives, a biography of the writer, and essayist Richard Rodriguez. The promotional material invites us to “Hear this fascinating and cautionary tale about how character, talent, and luck weigh in the mysterious balance that tips a writer toward fame or failure.”
Now let’s talk about literary failure.
As someone who is a fan of Seymour Krim, and has a book coming out that collects Krim’s work, I know a thing or two about what level of oblivion a writer can achieve if all his stars are lined up just right. And let me tell you something, Rosenfeld is out of his league.
You call that oblivion? His boyhood friend was Saul Bellow, for crying out loud. That’s like living next door to where George Washington slept. People are always passing by, and you get noticed.
Rosenfeld is one of the famous obscure writers. One of those offered as an example of writers who’ve been unfairly forgotten. Left off the list of writers consigned to oblivion are the writers who have really been forgotten.
Like Krim.
But I guess boasting about whose writer is more obscure gets at something interesting about literary failure: that if there ever was a field meant for failing, it’s writing. Everyone loves loving a forgotten, failed writer.
It’s interesting. Why is that?
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