Delusions of Grandeur
Boy was it icy out last Thursday night. Here in the Northeast, we had an ice storm. In fact, "The Ice Storm" was going to be the title of this post, and I was going to write about how it took me an hour and a half, and a deus ex machina (deus=my father, machina=his four-wheel-drive Ford Explorer), to get across town. But that'd be pretty boring, and besides, I've just said all there is to say about it.
The real excitement came when we finally got home and I scurried over to my laptop to find out how many new hits there had been on my blog since last I checked. (I'll refrain from judging this action myself and allow you, dear reader, to arrive at your own conclusion.) I gleefully discovered that there had been a flurry of activity on the old (T)UILG since I'd been out. More than 25 hits!
A closer inspection of the statistics revealed that this spike in hits did not signify a clutch of new readers all spontaneously flocking to the site at once. Rather, it seemed that a single reader had gone through and read practically every post I've written since I started blogging a couple of months ago.
I jumped to the conclusion that some saavy, widely-read reporter had stumbled onto this site, gave it a comprehensive once over, and was preparing to feature it prominently in his or her next piece. The exposure would catapult me into the national spotlight, land me a book deal, and in no time I'd be retreating to rural New Hampshire to join J.D. Salinger in mythic, sequestered obscurity.
The moment passed. I'd been down this road before. A month or so ago I got an email from a friend telling me that I needed to look at the back cover of the New York Times Magazine(!). Thoughts similar to the ones above raced through my head. It turned out to be a full page ad for some cosmetics brand, which my friend thought I should see because it featured the golden-tressed, pale-skinned face of Gwyneth Paltrow. You'd think I'd've learned my lesson after that episode.
It seems that every day that goes by causes my ambition to grow that much more. And it gets harder to stomach the idea that someday soon I'm probably going to have to settle.
I was reading an article on Wikipedia about Thomas Pynchon recently. The article stated that he had graduated college in 1959 and that he began to work as a technical writer for Boeing in February of the following year. While he was at Boeing, he worked on his first novel, which was published two years later and was awarded the William Faulkner Award for the best first novel of the year. Now, I'm often looking for people whose post-graduate careers resemble mine in any way (you may remember my Susan Orlean period). Here was evidence that the great author Thomas Pynchon had been unemployed for several months after he graduated, took a low-rent job, wrote creatively in his spare time, and went on to have one of the most distinguished literary careers of the 20th century.
My journalistic instincts kicked in after I read this, and I commenced a thorough scouring of the internet for more biographical information about Pynchon. There were a few gaps in the timeline that Wikipedia had left out:
By the time Pynchon graduated from college, he was already earning money from the publication of short stories. He turned down many opportunities (including fellowships, a position as a writing instructor at Cornell, and a job reviewing films at Esquire magazine) and took the Boeing job so that he would have more time to finish his novel.
So, another potential role model had bit the dust. Maybe it's time to start writing my own version of the biography of a successful writer.
The real excitement came when we finally got home and I scurried over to my laptop to find out how many new hits there had been on my blog since last I checked. (I'll refrain from judging this action myself and allow you, dear reader, to arrive at your own conclusion.) I gleefully discovered that there had been a flurry of activity on the old (T)UILG since I'd been out. More than 25 hits!
A closer inspection of the statistics revealed that this spike in hits did not signify a clutch of new readers all spontaneously flocking to the site at once. Rather, it seemed that a single reader had gone through and read practically every post I've written since I started blogging a couple of months ago.
I jumped to the conclusion that some saavy, widely-read reporter had stumbled onto this site, gave it a comprehensive once over, and was preparing to feature it prominently in his or her next piece. The exposure would catapult me into the national spotlight, land me a book deal, and in no time I'd be retreating to rural New Hampshire to join J.D. Salinger in mythic, sequestered obscurity.
The moment passed. I'd been down this road before. A month or so ago I got an email from a friend telling me that I needed to look at the back cover of the New York Times Magazine(!). Thoughts similar to the ones above raced through my head. It turned out to be a full page ad for some cosmetics brand, which my friend thought I should see because it featured the golden-tressed, pale-skinned face of Gwyneth Paltrow. You'd think I'd've learned my lesson after that episode.
It seems that every day that goes by causes my ambition to grow that much more. And it gets harder to stomach the idea that someday soon I'm probably going to have to settle.
I was reading an article on Wikipedia about Thomas Pynchon recently. The article stated that he had graduated college in 1959 and that he began to work as a technical writer for Boeing in February of the following year. While he was at Boeing, he worked on his first novel, which was published two years later and was awarded the William Faulkner Award for the best first novel of the year. Now, I'm often looking for people whose post-graduate careers resemble mine in any way (you may remember my Susan Orlean period). Here was evidence that the great author Thomas Pynchon had been unemployed for several months after he graduated, took a low-rent job, wrote creatively in his spare time, and went on to have one of the most distinguished literary careers of the 20th century.
My journalistic instincts kicked in after I read this, and I commenced a thorough scouring of the internet for more biographical information about Pynchon. There were a few gaps in the timeline that Wikipedia had left out:
By the time Pynchon graduated from college, he was already earning money from the publication of short stories. He turned down many opportunities (including fellowships, a position as a writing instructor at Cornell, and a job reviewing films at Esquire magazine) and took the Boeing job so that he would have more time to finish his novel.
So, another potential role model had bit the dust. Maybe it's time to start writing my own version of the biography of a successful writer.
posted by temporarily unemployed at 17:00
3 Comments:
My gosh. What kind of surveillance is going on here? I didn't know that the Patriot Act extended into Blogspot. In my defense, studying for exams can push anyone into the most extreme forms of desperation (i.e. rereading every single one of your posts:)) If cnn, gmail, and sports illustrated are keeping track, then they're all going to see more than 25 hits.
By the way, Time magazine gave King Kong a bad review.
I think there's something very romantic (and novel-worthy) about unemployment. Keep fighting the good fight.
Don't worry, the hit counter only shows the number of hits (broken down into categories of "total hits," "unique hits," "returning visitors," and "new visitors"). I can't tell who's doing the hitting--unless, of course, the hitter chooses to reveal himself in the comment section.
Posting on a blog by name? Isn't that really the post-college version of posting to discuss?
Also, Vegas has $5 minimum blackjack tables.
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