There are authors who write one book which makes them famous, even world famous and then – silence. Margaret Mitchell's “Gone with the Wind”, published in 1936 and arguably an even greater success as one of Hollywood's most spectacular films, is a case in point. She produced no second novel, sequels and pre-sequels fervently wished for by readers all over the world, were produced long after her premature death by others.
And then there is fellow American writer Harper Lee whose “To kill a Mocking Bird” became as novel and film another classic of worldwide renown. Again loyal readers from Alabama to Zambia hoped in vain for more about doughty Scott and her upright lawyer father and are still waiting to-day, fifty years on.
The third author is J. D. Salinger, whose teenage anti-hero and drop out Holden Caulfield, much loved by adult as well as younger readers, has cult status. Salinger literally removed himself from fame to an isolated farm and only published a few short stories but wrote tirelessly according to scuttlebutt. We must wait and see.....
And the reasons for such adamant refusal for further books ? Permanent writers' block sounds most unlikely, but if it were so, what might be the root causes ? Perhaps a fear of failing after a unique first success stops an author from trying again, based on the neurotic notion that great success can only be followed by commensurate failure. The counter argument would be personal vanity, providing the spur to achieve greater fame next time, and the time after that. And surely nobody can be called a failure until deserted by readers and panned by critics ?
How true though is the old adage that “every person has one book inside him or her?” Does the creative flame simply die through being “written out” so that no more is to be said? Again, surely topics, especially if a winnning formula, can be re-worked, continued in the manner of say Charles Dickens ?
A writer's gestation and publication woes are no doubt formidable, perhaps even more so than the actual writing of the manuscript. Also particularly persuasive is one personality factor, the tendency to reclusiveness which seems to be prevalent in varying degrees, but with overriding effect, in all three authors. Miss Mitchell was famously shy,her public appearances carefully selected and always on her own terms. Miss Harper lives a retiring existence in her hometown and Mr Salinger's eremitic life on his farm can be called pathologically sequestered.
And now away from Anglo-Saxon writers to one author, where one wishes he had stopped writing, after his first and only success.
One of the great works of modern Italian literature is “Christ stopped at Eboli” by Carlo Levi. The scion of a well-to-do middle class family in Turin he studied medicine but never practised, devoting most of his time to painting instead. In fascist Italy his left-wing liberal attitudes made him a marked man and in the 1930s he was duly sentenced to three years “internal exile” to be spent in the deep South of Italy. He was lucky to be pardoned after one year, his amnesty the result of victory in the Abyssinian war. In 1945 he published the book best described as the account of a man pitchforked into a totally alien environment in his own country, of whose existence he had known nothing.The intellectual,sophisticated and progressive Northerner is confronted with the “Mezzogiorno” , the backward region where time stood still,hope had died and change seemed impossible. Instead of giving in to despair, recoiling from malaria,dire poverty and primitive living conditions more mediaeval than twentieth century, he chronicled life in a tiny village in Basilicata region. Accepted locally, even welcomed as a doctor, he tries to understand the peasant world around him from which there is seemingly no escape for those trapped in miserable poverty, tied to the infertile soil through rack rents and high taxes. For the bravest emigration may be a way out, a return home unlikely. Faithfully he records what he sees and hears with understanding and sympathy, the ancient customs, more pagan than Christian, the adoration of the Black Madonna but also witchcraft and magic, the pointless harking back to Bourbon rule and the brigands.
The book became a worldwide success and would never be out of print in many languages.After 1945 Levi continues to write, to paint and to travel. European and especially Italian post-war turmoil presented him with an opportunity to advocate a leftwing liberal solution for old and new problems. In 1946 he wrote “Fear of Freedom” demanding an end to the class struggle which exploits the poor, and in “The Clock” he expresses his strong disapproval of the postwar situation in Rome. Sadly, his writing had become a shrill political rant written more in the style of political pamphlets than the elegant prose of his first book. Even more disappointing because of their dull and preachy content, are his following books. “Words and Stones” is the result of a trip to Sicily and in the 1950s he wrote two books after brief sojourns to West Germany and the Soviet Union which are best forgotten, as is his final book on Sardinia, a re-hash of his views on the poor, always toiling and always forgotten. His post war writing disappeared from the bookshops and even libraries. A pity he bothered.
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