Envy

 

One thing I have often taken pride from, as well as comfort, is that I feel no envy for anybody else. I honestly would not swap places with anybody else's life. I like being me! However, I have had an experience that makes it impossible for me to avoid a sense of righteous indignation. I wrote a while ago about the "Last Gasp", the writers' circle I was a member of long ago, see: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2020/12/writers-circles.html. One of the members was a young man about my own age who was training to be some kind of counsellor; I'll call him "Jeff". He tended to write short plays and prose that I considered rather amateurish and substandard. He actually once admitted to me that his principle reason for taking up writing was because his elder brother had become a published novelist and that he wanted to beat him at it. "Anything he can do, I can do better!" he said; with a chuckle, as if he knew that his fraternal rivalry was a very juvenile emotion. I found that rather odd considering that I had spoken to his brother and was well aware that he was generally far less successful in life than Jeff. Jeff was in a far higher status job and also had many other talents that his bother lacked. He had done far better in education. He sang in a classical choir and also played tennis at a semi-professional level. His brother could do none of those things. Writing was all he had; and Jeff couldn't even let him keep that. He had invaded and displaced his older brother from the only space he had within his family's structure. Despite his very mediocre abilities, Jeff was a firm favourite of the Last Gasp attendees and they constantly heaped the praise upon him that I was always denied. This may well have been because he "fitted in" more than I did for the reasons I describe in the article about writers' circles. Lindsay never challenged him, in fact she admired him the most; which should have been a warning for me. I didn't quite grasp the issue at the time, but Jeff was a writer who was very, to use today's terminology: "woke".
 
Therefore I should have been prepared for what came next when I met Jeff again a couple of years ago. We bumped into each other by chance. He greeted me warmly and we began reminiscing about old times at the writers' circle. He never commented on my own writing when I told him what I had been doing. He had always been fairly indifferent to me in the group. He had been far less critical than Lindsay, Bridget and Giles and I never felt the same hostility from him that I felt from some of the others. Yet he was aloof, even more introverted than the average author. I asked him what he was working on at that moment and he replied: "It's a play about Islamophobia!" He then went onto describe how his script had been immediately snapped up by a London theatre company and it was being produced for the West End. I nodded politely and said "well done!", but I rolled my inward eyes. I can write circles around this guy, yet nobody has ever offered to adapt my Roswell trilogy into a stage spectacular. We parted on good terms and then I met him again two weeks ago, also coincidentally; he must be living in Oxford again. Since his West End extravaganza Jeff has written another play which is being performed at a drama festival in Canada. At the time he was just packing for a trip to an island resort off the coast of British Columbia that is so luxurious that it would make Dr Steven Greer weep. This new play is a futuristic dystopian drama about an imaginary white supremacist male chauvinist state; again, very politically correct. He told me this news without any hint of boasting or vainglory in his tone, although he must obviously know my own literary career falls far short of his. I wished him all the best for it... What else could I do? This news made me feel the way I did when I watched similar stories like Get Out and The Handmaid's Tale, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2021/12/worst-movies-hospital-porter-reacts.html and: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-handmaids-tale.html. Is Jeff compensating for his own lack of skill by filling his works with trendy leftwing conceptual elements? If so, is he aware of that? Maybe he is doing this subconsciously; after all, cultural Marxism is so engrained in our society that it operates at a fundamental level of most people's cognition. I couldn't hold back a stab of resentment at Jeff's achievements; but is that justified? There are no laws stopping him writing the way he wants to and what am I meant to do? Ask him: "Please, Jeff, stop writing because you're doing better than I am and I don't like it?" I have far more ability than him to be a big hit in the mainstream, and could get there if I wanted to, but I could not bring myself to write the kinds of plots that get you up the ladder in today's literary climate. I cannot portray white people as evil simply because they are white. I can't produce allegories of white males all being rapists when I know that's not true. It is not my lack of talent that prevents me being a household name in the authors' hit parade; it is my political philosophy. I should take solace from the fact that within the fringe society I occupy, people do appreciate me. That has to be enough. I am certainly not the first artist who has been in this position. Bill Hopkins led a similar life, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/ive-got-banned-book.html. It could be worse! At least I don't have to bury my manuscripts in a hole in the ground like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn did to stop the secret police from finding it arresting him. I refuse to be drawn into self-pity. I am not in competition with Jeff. He can do what he does in his world and I will do what I do in mine. Still, I hope you won't think I'm being petty by keeping Jeff's identity a secret so I don't add to his already burgeoning fame and fortune.
See here for more information: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.