How to write a book that people still want to read a hundred years from now
How today's books become tomorrow's classics--and whether there's anything you can do to help yours along in that direction.
“What makes something endure? What is it in language and style and subject matter that you have seen last?”
This is the third newsletter and counting I’ve been able to juice from the questions of a single Neon client who submitted them all for the other week’s Q and A. Thank you, anonymous client, for saving me the idea-generating spoons this month.
My answer—spoiler alert—is basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Don’t worry, though: I will henceforth expound on that at length with the goal of equipping you all to answer the question in a way that feels right and useful to you. Because he’s far from alone in wondering.
Why do any authors care about whether their books “endure”?
Um. Better question: how is it that they can find the time to care about ANYTHING ELSE?
As Stefon would say, this question has everything: personal value! Platonic ideals! Structural inequality! Cultural production! The fundamental uncontrollability of life and the slippery, ever-shifting meanings of language! Oh, and don’t forget the biggie: CRIPPLING TERROR ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE ONE DAY!
Many, many authors—and people in general—are spurred to creative work by that last thing. On some level, consciously or not, they are battling their own mortality, stabbing at specters of personal obscurity, irrelevance, communal rejection, and above all, being forgotten. They think that maybe, just maybe, if they make their art just right and then make other people recognize and praise what they’ve made, they can join the list of the, like, 100 people humanity sort of remembers among the approximately 100 billion who’ve existed to date.
Of course, the creators in question won’t be alive to enjoy much of the Congrats Twitter for this, but, you know, meh. Maybe the Congrats Twitter will be so lit that it resurrects them.
(Anyone else thinking of poor Tommy and his doodles in Never Let Me Go right now, or just me?)