Cream always rises to the top

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

I’ve been a struggling writer most of my life, which is a funny statement from someone who owns a newspaper.

It’s also the reason I went into the newspaper business in the first place; nobody else would publish me.

Sure, I wrote a novel when I was 25 years old and a strange defrocked priest from New Zealand ended up publishing it to absolutely no acclaim. I think I made $500 off of it, only after threatening to toss my publisher into the lake if he didn’t pay me (he did pay me, but I still threw him in the lake; he deserved it). I also wrote three original plays and produced them on the Panida’s main stage, entertaining perhaps dozens of people, but my heart was always in fiction. I always wanted to write a truly great novel and die with the satisfaction that I created something that might make someone else feel like I’ve felt reading my favorite books over the years.

Like many journalists, I have dozens of these failed novels haunting my hard drives. It reminds me of those guys who collect junk cars and trucks in their yards. They don’t have time or money to fix them up now, but maybe someday, at some point in the future when things slow down, they’ll throw a new engine in there, slap on a new coat of paint and go for a ride.

Someday, I say to myself, staring out of my office window feeling absolutely buried by the amount of work it takes to produce a newspaper each and every week. Someday I’ll finish that final chapter and work out all the inconsistencies in that one book. Then I’ll go for a ride.

The thing about “someday” is that it never really comes when you want it to. This is where I insert the story of the man who wins the lottery, retires from his job and promptly dies two weeks later. Life is funny like that.

Writers have probably struggled since first etching their cuneiform characters into clay. There is a certain agony that writers understand best, when a thought refuses to come out whole through their fingers and onto the page. For those times, there are editors and publishers who help the cream to continue rising to the top.

Before Charles Bukowski was a renowned poet who chronicled the seedy side of life, he was just a drunk who liked to sit at racetracks and bars scribbling into his notebook. Sure, anyone who reads Bukowski’s poems will recognize his prowess with the written word and his ability to shine a powerful light onto the downtrodden, but recognition doesn’t fill a growling stomach. It wasn’t until John Martin recognized Bukowski’s genius and invested everything he had into making the man famous that Bukowski’s stock began to rise. Martin founded Black Sparrow Press explicitly to publish Bukowski’s work and now, thanks to Martin’s financial assistance, moral support and stewardship, Bukowski is revered by many as the 20th-century Walt Whitman.

Another example is the editor of editors, Maxwell Perkins, who is best remembered for discovering authors like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins worked as a reporter for The New York Times, then joined the Charles Scribner’s Sons publishing house to become an editor. However, he grew tired of publishing older authors. He longed to publish the exciting words of younger writers, so, unlike many editors, he actively sought out young authors with promise. It was a gamble that paid off, giving the world such words as The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, Look Homeward, Angel and so many more.

The closest thing I’ve ever had to an editor who cares about my words and cultural output is my friend and colleague Zach Hagadone, who happens to be the editor-in-chief of this little rag. For years, Zach has endured my painful stories and tortured plotlines, weaving his fingers in that magical way he has to give meaning where there was little or none before.

Alas, there is only so much lipstick one can apply to a pig, so even Zach’s Herculean efforts have proved futile for my career as a novelist.

Without the Martins, Perkinses and Hagadoneses of the world who actively sought out and cultivated young voices with something to say, the world of literature might be a bit less exciting to this day. We certainly wouldn’t have exposure to many of the writers who have gone on to define what it is to live and die in America.

So, as much as I love the writer’s struggle, I think I love more the ability to publish those who have more promise and ability than I do, in the hopes that their words might live longer than mine ever had a chance to do. 

It’s been a unique joy publishing the words of so many young writers in these pages over the years. Cream really does rise to the top. Talent always finds an outlet, and if that’s my place in this world — to provide a medium for talented wordsmiths to share their thoughts with the world — maybe, just maybe, someone in the future might read their words and be inspired to continue the cycle. 

Onward and upward.