From adolescence until quite recently, my dream was to become the “greatest” fiction writer of my generation. But what is “greatness” for an artist, particularly a fiction writer?

What I really wanted was to garner more acclaim than any other fiction writer of my generation. After reading the biographies of many notable fiction writers, I realized that such a goal was meaningless. The most acclaimed writers are seldom the most skilled and many writers who were highly acclaimed during their lifetimes simply created work that fit the cultural discourse of the time — work that faded away once that discourse evolved.

With this realization, my dream gradually evolved from being the most acclaimed fiction writer of my generation to being the one whose oeuvre will stand the test of time. This seems a bit more noble — wanting one’s work to be enjoyed for thousands of years rather than seeking the quick, greasy thrill of fame.

There is one problem with this dream – it’s impossible to know within one’s own lifetime whether one’s work will be enjoyed for hundreds or thousands of years. Such a goal can’t provide direction for the daily grind of working at one’s craft alone in a dark room.

Grappling with this problem eventually led me to a solution so simple I feel it should have been my mindset from the beginning — wanting to write purely for the sake of writing.

I need to dedicate my life to writing fiction because that’s the only way I can feel fulfilled day in and day out. I need to maximize whatever potential I have because that’s the only way I can imagine feeling satisfied with my life when I’m on my deathbed.

It’s a relief to not rely on external affirmation to feel good about my life, especially at a time when very few people are really passionate about literary fiction. Those that are have largely ignored my work up until this point, which I used to find discouraging until I realized it doesn’t really matter for a literary fiction writer who wants their work to be read for thousands of years. How many fiction writers of lasting influence received little to no acclaim in their time?

I know from reading a thousand interviews that many artists are chasing recognition rather than personal fulfillment. I’ve heard artists in all fields describe themselves as failures if they aren’t selling books, paintings, albums, etc. or winning major awards.

This is symptomatic of our society’s obsession with celebrity, which only seems to have gotten worse in the Internet Age. If you don’t rise above the noise, you don’t exist to anyone who doesn’t know you in real life.

Real artists, those who have a deep love for and dedication to their craft, need not feel this way. If you’re doing work that feels meaningful and relentlessly pursuing mastery, you can feel contented with your life. On the other hand, if what you really want is to be famous, you won’t feel ever feel fulfilled – even if you do become a celebrity.

Sticking to this mindset is easier said than done, for myself and for anyone else. Completely ignoring the dominant cultural discourse at all times is almost impossible. Getting to the point where you truly don’t give a fuck about the contemporary acclaim or popularity of your work might not even be possible — I must confess that I’m not at that point yet. However, it is possible to expel any negativity that comes your way — simply get to work.

It’s no secret that young people in America and elsewhere in the first world are getting lonelier and lonelier. The term “loneliness epidemic” has become so common that it’s now a bit of a cliche.

The reasons we’ve been struck by this epidemic are many and varied. It’s far too simplistic to say that young people are lonelier because they read less. However, I do feel that this is one of the reasons that people are so lonely.

Going Numb

Instead of spending time with other people or reading, most citizens of the first world under the age of 40 now spend every moment of their free time distracting themselves from their loneliness with various forms of Internet-based entertainment. This not only doesn’t treat the root cause of the problem, it doesn’t even really treat the symptom.

Watching TikTok videos and the like is a treatment for loneliness in the same way that lidocaine is a treatment for a third-degree burn. It only provides a moment’s relief, the symptom is still there, just a bit further away, and you need more and more and more to get by.

The most commonly prescribed treatment for loneliness is to spend time with other humans — in-person. While this is certainly part of a healthy treatment regimen, it’s inadequate by itself.

The Two Types Of Loneliness

There are two types of loneliness. Surface-level loneliness and existential loneliness. Spending time with other humans can only treat surface-level loneliness. No matter how much time you spend with other people, however, it won’t treat your existential loneliness. You’ll still be alone within your own consciousness. In fact, spending time with the wrong people—those who quite obviously see the world very differently—can actually make existential loneliness worse.

Existential loneliness, from which surface-level loneliness metastasizes, is far harder to treat and perhaps impossible to cure. In fact, there’s no treatment for it in the physical world, nor is such a treatment even possible.

The Only Treatment

The only possible treatment for existential loneliness is to share your consciousness with someone. But this is impossible in the “real” world, and by extension impossible in nonfiction books anchored in the real world.

Reading fiction is the only way you can share your consciousness with someone and overcome existential loneliness. Fiction puts the character’s consciousness on the page, which becomes your consciousness when you read the book and its words become your thoughts. For this to happen, you need to open your mind to an alternate reality in which sharing consciousnesses is possible — which is what readers are doing when they dive into a work of fiction.

The Shortcomings Of Nonfiction

Nonfiction, like bad fiction, is written for an audience to understand. It’s the paper equivalent of a speech or campfire story by the author. This means that the author’s thoughts are translated into the words they think will get across the necessary information as clearly and forcefully as possible. To make it sound a bit less intellectual — nonfiction comes from the mouth, while fiction comes from the heart.

Of course, fiction can include such overt and clearly stated messages from the author. This, put simply, is the definition of pretentiousness. Pretentiousness is so detested by literary readers, myself included, because it shatters the fictional world by making the work feel like a lecture.

Attempts to Bridge the Gap

Creative nonfiction attempts to find a solution to these shortcomings through the use of fictional devices. But is creative nonfiction really nonfiction?

Take literary journalism, for example. If the author is acting in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise because they want to create a good story or they’re making up the thoughts of real-life characters… well, that certainly sounds like the creation of fictional stories to me.

The Prognosis

It certainly doesn’t seem like people will start putting down their smartphones and picking up literature en masse. Realistically, there’s no reason to believe that the dual trends of increased screen time and reducing reading time will do anything but accelerate. However, there will always be readers because literature will always offer something that can’t be found anywhere else.

A Sacred Calling

If there will always be readers, there always needs to be books to treat them. There are a finite number of great books in the world. An avid reader could get through them in a couple of years. What would they do then, without more books entering the world, books that offer the possibility of escaping the deadliest strain of loneliness?

This is the best reason I can find to keep writing in an era where literature doesn’t even have a place in mainstream American culture. If I can help just one reader feel less alone, the drudgery and pain of writing fiction is not for naught. This is a purpose every fiction writer can fall back on. 

James Salter’s ouevre is underrated as a whole, especially A Sport and a Pastime. His 1975 work, Light Years, is also a worthy inclusion in this series, perhaps even more so than A Sport and a Pastime. While the latter has become a cult classic among writers and avid literary readers, the former is still far more obscure.

Capturing the Flow of Life

Light Years isn’t quite at the level of A Sport and a Pastime. This is primarily because its prose isn’t quite as beautiful.Of course, the book is still full of stunning passages like this:

“Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.
And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.”

However, there are more grasps at greatness that come up empty-handed:

“But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires.”

Though its prose might not be quite as gorgeous, the characters are far stronger. The protagonists, Nedra and Viri, feel perfectly true to the sort of New England bourgeoisie whose lifestyle they represent.

In contrast, A Sport and a Pastime’s main characters are largely imagined by a narrator who stays out of focus himself.

It’s in the flow of Nedra and Viri’s lives (to put it technically, how Salter develops these characters through the book) that Light Years is truly remarkable. Speaking from experience, it’s incredibly difficult to portray how people slowly change through many years in a book of a few hundred pages. Salter not only manages to do this, he portrays Nedra and Viri’s gradual resignation to ordinariness with a sort of elegiac beauty that lifts the book above the sort of “kitchen-sink realism” often employed to tell such stories.

Just How Underappreciated Is Light Years?

Light Years deserves acclaim, and it hasn’t received its just due. But just how underappreciated is it?

As with A Sport and a Pastime, I’ll compare Light Year‘s metrics with the most acclaimed literary novel of the year so we can get an idea of just how underrated the book really is. To my knowledge, the benchmark for 1975 is E.L. Doctorow’s classic Ragtime.

Ragtime, despite being widely regarded as a great novel, is only the 59,000th (roughly) best-selling book on Amazon. Light Years is ranked lower, of course, though not quite as much lower as I thought (roughly 78,000th). The two books also have relatively similar monthly search volumes.

While Ragtime may not sell an order of magnitude more copies than Light Years, it is far more widely acclaimed. It was included in both the Modern Library’s and Time’s lists of the 100 best English-language novels. While A Sport and a Pastime can be found in the Time list, Light Years was overlooked in both publications.

The library listings in WorldCat further underscore the difference in acclaim. Ragtime can be found in 4,184 libraries world-wide at the time of writing, while Light Years is only in a mere 863 collections.

Final Thoughts

Light Years is unmissable for any reader that loves beautiful prose. I wouldn’t quite say it’s unmissable, period, like A Sport and a Pastime. If you can only afford one Salter book and you’re stuck between these two, take the latter. However, if you’ve enjoyed A Sport and a Pastime and you want more, look no further than Light Years.