“A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about anything and everything and other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other disheveled, bespectacled writers. He says very ‘deep things’ .He always has amazing ideas for his next novel and hates the one he has just published.” Paulo’s findings—from research when he decided to become a writer ages ago— conforms to our stereotypical image of artists in general.
In our country, and possibly in many other countries, there have been writers who have inspired youth to grow beard, smoke weed and to oppose anything and everything! The cleverest of them are those who sit in their Presidential Suites and whip up sordid tales of regression and pessimism combined with mandatory alcohol abuse. However, those were the sixties, the influence of which stretched up to the eighties.
Today a writer( and even a non-writer—read celebrity—who becomes one by default because of his/her scandelous life style) is known by the millions he/she is paid in advance for some callous cacophony of pulp fiction or anecdotes about his/her titillating experiences to be churned out some time in the future! Thanks to the one scandalous piece of arrogance in the past which has enlivened the spirits of the self-styled clairvoyant group from glick-land who’ll put up their hand on every given opportunity to oppose norms. Not that it’s important to tow the linear line.
“A writer has a duty and obligation never to be understood by his own generation…”. How true, even though speaking only about writers here it again holds good for artists in general, albeit of yester years. Those were the times when lunacy and artistic talent went hand in hand; precisely why they were immortalized and viewed through rose-tinted glasses by the coming generations, but shunned by their own generation. There was a mystic aura about them which lived through various tales over the years and made legends out of these writers, especially if they had kicked the bucket at a very young age. In stark contrast, the contemporary author craves for attention—media attention to be precise—as his purpose is served only when he becomes a page three celebrity.
“When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of”. It gives them credibility and a chance to fortify their importance in society, and to be perceived by the ignorant folks baffled by the depth of knowledge of this great person.
I have not listed all the findings. And you know what was the most interesting of them all which I kept for denouement … the fact that the writer never uses the 3000 common words used by the common man. He always chooses from the other 3 lakh plus words in English language!!! (Note that in the original text Paulo has mentioned around 2 lakh which he might have meant keeping in mind the Portuguese dictionary)
All said and done there are men like Paulo himself who is not a one book wonder nor has he scandalized his way to stardom, but has touched the hearts of many by the depth of meaning and message in his writing. I feel it unfortunate that this great man—even though for marketing reasons— is still introduced on every new book cover of his as the “Author of ‘THE ALCHEMIST’”–Paulo Coelho.
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