by Jack E.
Member since:
February 24, 2008

Martin Eden: A Writer’s Story More Bitter Than Sweet- By Jack Engelhard

January 17, 2012 10:13 PM UTC (Updated: January 17, 2012 11:01 PM UTC)
views: 0 | 3 people recommend this | comments: 21

 

 

Jack London wrote this novel, “Martin Eden,” when he was only in his 30s and it’s really the story of his life…about making it as a writer and about achieving that goal and about the futility of it all. He wanted fame and wealth and he got all that after years of rejection. He wanted the girl of his dreams, Ruth Morse, and when she finally came to him, he’d had enough.

 

Can you relate?

 

By the time the world caught up to him, Martin Eden was emptied out. The people whose approval he sought turned out to be phonies.

 

This brings to mind J.D. Salinger who (so brilliantly and so timelessly) used Holden Caulfield to express the same loathing, disgust and despair.

 

This also brings to mind King Solomon’s despair on achieving practically everything he desired and… then what?

 

Of the upper classes that he had pursued, all that glittered was not gold…it was snobbery.

 

I don’t remember the novel’s particulars all that well but I read it when I was in my own 30s or thereabouts. One scene remains vivid…that’s when (penniless) he finally got one of his stories accepted and published…Eureka!... and the publisher never got around to submitting a check. Martin Eden had to go begging for his money…the money he had earned, the money he was owed, the money that was his.

 

Can you relate?

 

Martin Eden expected charm and dignity among the literati, the sultans who served as book editors and book publishers, and found them ignorant and brutish. In his struggling years Martin Eden had been judged…judged to be useless, a failure. He was UNWELCOME.

 

They were thieves. They were murderers. In publishing the worst and scuttling the best, they stole the best years of a writer’s life.

 

Can you relate?

 

Martin Eden sought recognition among the upper class, personified in the glorious Ruth Morse. They – and she – kept turning him down.

 

He seethed in his obscurity and swore that by the sweat of his brow one day…one day he would show them.

 

He picked up demeaning jobs here and there but meanwhile he kept writing driven onward by lonely and hurtful and resentful ambition.

 

Finally it came, success, but by this time he was nursing a grudge against all the glitterati and literati who had snubbed him. There was no recouping the lost years. When Ruth Morse came to him at the moment when he was the most famous writer in America, Martin Eden (Jack London?) turned his back to her.

Martin Eden refused to forget. Martin Eden refused to forgive.

Can you understand? Can you relate?

About the author: Novelist Jack Engelhard’s international bestseller “Indecent Proposal” is now available on Kindle (as well as paperback). Also related to this article are his novels “The Girls of Cincinnati” and “Slot Attendant – A Novel About A Novelist.” Website: www.indecentviews.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments: 21

Linda Shelnutt Jan 18, 2012, 12:50am UTC
Molasses Moon relates... It's a poor relative, LOL. But that book is more about how to keep renewing yourself on the long roads, and building self esteem through repeated rejection. No bitterness now, though, just relief with Kindle and KDP, for which I feel so fortunate. I'm so happy for the wisdom gained through my Molasses path, and a tap rooted marriage. Been listening to a Frank Sinatra CD with My Way, That's Life, and Young at Heart. They relate, especially, That's Life.
Linda Shelnutt Jan 18, 2012, 12:56am UTC
Yet we still have a right to bitterness. It has its righteous place and time. I'm thankful to recognize the phoney, the empty, the truly lacking in value.
Linda Shelnutt Jan 18, 2012, 1:12am UTC
Yes, Molasses Moon relates. I'm enjoying the heck out of reading that on video, interjecting cautiously, sparingly, my feelings now into the reality then. Thank you, Jack, for sharing this essay at this time. As you know better than any of us, it's about doing it your way, in spite of that integrity being unwelcome. Still, it is a long road, earning a living in very painful ways while raw, pure talent is being spent in blood.
Jack E. Jan 19, 2012, 3:16pm UTC
Great line of yours, Linda..."pure talent being spent in blood."
John Cassell Jan 19, 2012, 6:05pm UTC
I have two very strong independent reactions here: the first, making the man go thru hell getting his money evoked that claustrophobic rage similiar to the one inspired by Jimmy Bleeds in DAYS OF THE BITTER END...in turn taking me back to my Boardwalk Days when everyone and his cousin would try any hustle to screw you out of ANY amount no matter how small....................................................

but second....hey come ON man.....ANYONE whose deeply held personal goal requires SOMEONE ELSE to do, to think or to be a certain way should have grown up in Atlantic City!!! I mean it just ain't gonna happen except by lucky accident, which is a chilling phenomenon on which to pin a personal goal!!!! You didn't know the Lords and Ladies of publishing were lowlife perverted scum??? AWWWWWW! the Lords and Ladies of Finance and Fashion??? the Lords and Ladiers of Anything Anywhere Any time????

NAH!!! the REAL THRILL is to make your fame, wealth, etc work for you. I figure you and your best two or three friends say goodbye to everyone at the factory with huge smiles on their faces....then a year later coming back to the factory and saying hello STILL with huge smiles on your faces!!!

otherwise..... what's the killin' for?
Linda Shelnutt Jan 19, 2012, 9:04pm UTC
This is expressed exquisitely, JWC, especially having to depend on others to achieve ones goals. That reminded me of what you had to deal with in your law enforcement career, a per your novel, The Slender Reed, just to keep your oath, your reputation, your sanity, even your life and freedom (staying out of jail). It reminds me of what Joe Carpine and his fellow mine owners had to go through to stay in mining after the regulations implemented in 1969 (The Price of Black Diamonds), and what Tom and his fellows are still having to work and suffer around.

It reminds me of what everyone employed by someone else, even those self employed go through to get around stupidity and malicious controls and manipulations from others they need to do their jobs. And the more you care about doing a very good job, the more you are put down.

In our days of earning a living here there seems to be no escaping some type of malicious control by others in places of any type of power.

I've memorized the words of Frank Sinatra's, That's Life. That song says so much, and it's not just about artists attempting to earn a living through their art, though that profession seems to dramatize these facts we all suffer from.

Escape is in walking away from the slime when you can, as soon as you can, and to learn what you did about people from Atlantic City street wisdom. You've opened some eyes about Law Enforcement through TSR, as Jack has done about writing professions through his books... And I through my books.
Linda Shelnutt Jan 19, 2012, 9:11pm UTC
But what Jack and my books are exposing is that books like his, yours, and mine would have never had a chance to be published in a viable marketplace in the days of publishing prior to KDP, with Amazon's availability of a marketplace open to those with initiative and follow through, those who let go of prima Donna entitlement.
John Cassell Jan 20, 2012, 1:39am UTC
so very well said.
Jack E. Jan 19, 2012, 10:36pm UTC
Well said Linda and John...let's not even talk about the corruption we have to overcome...that's too big for right now...we can begin with incompetence. When IP came out and was translated into more than 22 languages and sold 4 million copies overseas, AND the movie broke box office records for four weeks straight, we approached the publisher of Pocket Books (owned by Simon and Schuster) and asked why no advertising was being done for the book here in the USA....get ready for this!...she did even know that the book had been published by her company. She (and her boss) had to be reminded that it was a Pocket Books novel. Hopeless! Any guess as to why I gave up on the big publishing houses?
Jack E. Jan 19, 2012, 10:40pm UTC
I meant to say she did NOT even know...let me add that no effort was made to sell IP in the USA and there were string suggestions that it was being deliberately hidden (more on this some other time)...despite Simon and Schuster's resistance, IP still sold more than 100,000 copies domestically...had it been given the full treatment that number would have been more than a million.
Jack E. Jan 19, 2012, 10:59pm UTC
That goodness we have BYPASS publishing...what writers in the Soviet Union used to call SAMIZDAT to get their forbidden works passed under the table.
Linda Shelnutt Jan 19, 2012, 11:04pm UTC
These added details on publishing history of your novel Indecent Proposal are very interesting. I apologize for not clarifying that IP did make the big time, every which way. It is surprising that it was published by an established house, because it has too much artistic integrity and steps righteously on too many of the wrong toes. It's not surprising that attempts were made to hold back the novel while feeding the surges of the movie, which buried all the subtle truths and depth of cultural exposure, leaving only the sensational question, which really was a coup of ethical, emotional intrigue.
Jack E. Jan 19, 2012, 11:07pm UTC
I blame this new computer for all these typos...
Linda Shelnutt Jan 19, 2012, 11:13pm UTC
But, yes, even forgetting the corruption, incompetence would have been enough to bury the novel, if it hadn't kept selling itself, once it had the stigma removal of coming out from a literary House.

Some machinations seem so dark, though, as exposed in your Bathsheba Deadline, that I wonder how they can manifest into existence with such an utter absence of light in the dirty design phases.
Linda Shelnutt Jan 19, 2012, 11:23pm UTC
LOL!! Definitely the new computer. I've been blaming my cell phone's Swype typing system, which I really enjoy using.

I appreciate knowing about the breaks being put on sales. Without that, your career would have been a very different story. A strange world we're living in, yet fascinating in ways.
Jack E. Jan 19, 2012, 11:31pm UTC
But not that simple, either. I was offered a significant contract and advance from a big traditional publisher for Bathsheba Deadline if only I would change violent Jihadists to the more conventional Nazis...in other words, political correctness likewise makes it near impossible to play with the big boys and girls...if you insist, and i do mean INSIST, on sticking to the truth you will never make it in New York (NY Publishing, as much as i love the town).
Linda Shelnutt Jan 20, 2012, 12:23am UTC
Truly not simple... all this is valuable detail.
John Cassell Jan 20, 2012, 1:48am UTC
I remember them dangling all that money in your face if you would only sell out....kiss the asses of the 'freedom fighters'
John Cassell Jan 20, 2012, 1:58am UTC
I felt a shift in the tides in the affairs of humankind that night....maybe an impact unknowable for a decade or more....yet integrity scored big this night.
jerome k. Jan 24, 2012, 10:36am UTC
It is often the rocky journey of people as well as writers. After all, in this global recession, propogated by some really greedy people in the financial 'industry' (or I could call it 'pig farm' but that would be unkind to pigs), who would be a young person leaving school today, when many older people, with skills for which they have experience and training, are being made redundant or simply kicked out of work. We who write with a self-inflicted passion (and there is a certain freedom in that) keep on keeping on BECAUSE we are hoping for THAT day, the day when a phone call or a letter give us some good news. Alongside the passion, IMHO you have to be h-u-n-g-r-y to write poetic and meaningful stuff! You have to have experienced loss or emotional pain to be able to write about them, even in fiction.

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