Erudite

Page after page of comments clutter the margins of his work, drawing attention away from the words on the page to the angry red strikes right, left, and centre. The carefully crafted piece is for naught now that he has been rejected, again. He’s always disliked the colour red as it stains the crisp white paper; the lines and symbols create a gaping wound that oozes with discontentment and unjust criticism.

His favourite professor had told him that he was a great writer, one of the best he’d seen; his least favourite professor had said it wasn’t always about the literature itself.

He glances at the comments once more, sweeping his eyes over the small spaces that are untouched, still showing his original intent. Meanwhile, the words in red tell him a variety of things that seem to contradict one another; rewrite this paragraph, eliminate this sentence, word choice, good!, terrible.

“Your words are too hard to understand,” says his editor.

“Too difficult to understand,” he corrects.

“See? That’s what I mean. You need to stop that. Nobody wants to read a modern-age Milton. Be more contemporary, can’t you?”

The words turn in his mind but ring hollow. How can he be contemporary yet neglect his style? Who’s to say that there aren’t modern-age Milton amateurs out there in the world? What’s so wrong with being a second Milton?

“Look, here for example, you wrote: ‘at the crack of dawn, the dew-filled flowers wilt and shutter until the next bout of darkness.’ What does that even mean?”

“It’s a metaphor…”

“Yeah, but no one cares about metaphors, similes, and whatever else you want to throw in there. Why can’t you just say, ‘the flowers died’ instead?”

“Because it’s not as beautiful…”

“You’re missing the point.”

They argue back and forth as they usually do, one accusing the other of being too high-browed, the other defending his right to be poetic. He’s used to it, this battle of wits. He’s had to fight all his life to get recognition for his work and yet, it still eludes him.

“Listen, don’t you want to be published? Isn’t that the end goal here?”

Is it? he wonders. Is it really the be-all and end-all of his life? He had always thought that he would write for the pleasure of writing, to share with the world his passion and his ideas.

“I don’t want to sell myself for popularity.”

“But you have to. You have to compromise. Look, what do Rowling and Meyers have in common?”

“Billions of dollars?” he jokes wryly.

“Well yes, and big blockbuster movie deals and all, but that’s not what I mean. Their novels are accessible, they’re popular, easy to read and understand. Nobody wants to read about wilting flowers in the darkness when you can say instead that they’re dead.”

“I’m dead at this point,” he replies, sighing deeply not for the first time. “Where has all the beauty, the lyricism, the poetry gone too?”

“You’re killing me here. How many times to I have to tell you, nobody cares about beauty. Books have to be quick and satisfying, easy to consume. The lady in line at the mart needs to be able to read through a few chapters before she gets to the cash register; the kid on the school bus needs to plow through a story before he’s dropped off at his stop.”

“Quick and easy, huh? Soulless, you mean.”

He examines the margins of his work once more and runs a finger along the hand-written comments, ink still fresh. There are so many things circled or struck-out, so much anger displayed towards his work; a sort of unassuming violence committed against his brand of literature. He lifts his fingers as if burnt by the soundless sneers. His hand comes away red.

“Why did you circle ‘fortnight’?”

“Do you need to ask? Who uses ‘fortnight’ in this day and age when you can say ‘two weeks’ instead?”

“It gives it flair…”

“No, it makes it unreadable. How many average Joes do you think would understand that word?”

“Well maybe they’d understand if they were exposed to it more often,” he rebukes without missing a beat. “Books are meant to educate people, not to treat them as though they are overgrown children who can barely read and write.”

“Yeah, yeah, the ‘educate the masses’ nonsense. Let me guess, Shakespeare?”

“… it was Bell, actually.”

“See? My point exactly: no one knows, and no one—”

“—cares,” he finishes for his editor, shoulders slumped.

“Look, I like you, you know I do, and I see so much potential in you, but you’ve got to put these lofty ideals aside.”

“I  care, though,” he mumbles as a response, still thinking of the previous morsel of conversation.

Comprehension settles in his mind as he suddenly gets what his least favourite professor had tried to tell him many years ago. It’s not about the literature. In the end, the toughest professor was the one with the most practical sense. At the time, he had wondered how a specialist could spout such words, how one could simply disregard depth and meaning in favour of popularity.

He had been fighting for so long, trying without success to draw attention to the sounds of words, the images constructed, the affects gleaned from the succession of events across the pages. Unfortunately for him, he had been too narrow-minded, it would seem.

“This is your last chance,” says his editor, interrupting his train of thought.

“What do you mean?”

“It means that I have to cut you if the next manuscript doesn’t make it further than my desk. It means that you’ll go back out into world without a hope of ever setting foot in a publishing house, ever again.”

“There are others…”

“You think? No, my friend, we’re all the same.”

The next time he writes, he replaces the word ‘difficult’ with ‘hard,’ changes ‘wilted flowers’ to ‘dead,’ and even takes out ‘fortnight’ entirely.

The next time he gets his work back from his editor, there are very few comments and pen marks scattered among the pages. There’s a big red stamp on the front cover that screams APPROVED at him. His editor has even gone as far as to draw a smiley face and scribble a ‘good job!’ with his signature red pen.

But at what cost?

His hands are forever stained red.