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Want to make yourself sad?
Sit down and write a book.
Then email the draft to publishers. Notice how many never respond – most won’t. Of those who do, you’ll get a note like this: “Thanks for your submission but this doesn’t fit our publishing needs.”
It took you hundreds of hours to write the book and it took the responder 15 seconds to say no if they even acknowledged your email at all.
Or let’s say you’re one of those one in a million people who convinces a publisher to publish your book. Many months later the book comes out. You send it to your friends. They set it on the table. They don’t read it.
You did all that work and no one reads what you wrote. This type of acute sadness, underscoring the difficulties we all face, is described in a book titled The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham.
“I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book and maybe puts his heart’s blood into it, and it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do,” the author writes.
This sad situation is one of many serious and somber issues in this book that a member of this Baby Boomer Brotherhood, who is one of my best friends in the world, recently recommended I read. So I read this wondering why he thought I might get something out of it and I am still not sure other than maybe he thinks I’m searching for the meaning of life, which I sometimes am, or that I need to spiritual reset, which I don’t feel I need.
Taking his advice, I read the book, and let me tell you with all the long-winded and complex sentences and unconventional sequencing of words and odd phrasing made it a tedious read I was glad to finish and stop enduring. I learned lots of what I already knew but gained a slightly deeper understanding of, and inspiration from, the nuances of widely known universal truths: people are selfish, there is evil in the world, and there may be a God but we can’t prove it, and being spiritual helps you feel more comfortable.
The book centers on the unusual life of the main character named Larry who, just after high school, goes to war and sees his friend die. After that, he comes back to his home in Chicago psychologically and emotionally changed. He gets offered appealing jobs in the white-collar Windy City world and has a chance to marry a pretty woman named Isabel, to start a conventional life in America. But Larry doesn’t pursue any of that.
“I want to make up my mind whether God is or God is not,” he says. “I want to find out why evil exists. I want to know whether I have an immortal soul or whether when I die it’s the end.”
This guy takes on all the big issues. Shunning the conventional career path, he leaves town in a situation oozing with emotional strife and complexity because, on the one hand, he loves Isabel, but on the other, he has to go find answers to his burning questions.
“If you love me you wouldn’t make me so unhappy,” says Isabel.
“I do love you,” says Larry. “Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.”
Ah, the complexities of life. Making ourselves happy. Making others happy. To love or not love. To marry or not marry. To love but decide not to marry. To make money or live on pennies. Decisions. Ambiguities. This book gushes with heavy-duty stuff.
In pursuit of answers, Larry heads to Europe and starts reading books to find the answers to all the biggest questions we have as humans. No matter how many people tell him he needs to get a normal job, stop searching for answers to life’s most difficult questions, and join mainstream society to make money, Larry refuses to deviate from his pursuit.
Author Profile
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
Sammy Sportface Has a Vision -- Check It Out
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