SARAH HOYT: What Happens When the Artist Chides His Audience?

I’m writing this from my garret, watched over by two small mice, who – enviously – watch my three remaining crumbs of bread. Tomorrow I eat them, and then it’s all up in the air whether or not I have the strength to finish the novel, my magnum opus upon which I have labored unrewarded for the last twenty years.

How many of you nodded along with that thinking it made any sense?

How many of you know I’m joking, but still think that is the way it should be?

Come on, reach deep into your soul and tell me the truth. How many of you think that for a work to be authentic it must be labored over in extreme poverty for a very long time, unappreciated by anybody until, possibly sometime after the author’s death, it is declared a genius masterpiece and talked about in hushed, reverent tones for the rest of eternity?

You can tell me the truth. You’re not an idiot. It’s the culture that’s stupid.

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