The Grapes of Wrath and The Trouble with Prosperity

I have taken The Grapes of Wrath down from the shelf, and I am reading about that other great devastation that we as a country found ourselves in. Tom Joad and his woes. Dust like a dry, dirty cloud that has fallen and stayed. The pitch of power against the laboring masses. Uncertainty, heartache, panic.

Newsweek has a Robert J. Samuelson column this week called "Good Times Breed Bad Times." It begins by recalling the James Grant book The Trouble with Prosperity, summarizing it this way: "Grant's survey of financial history captured his crusty theory of economic predestination. If things seem splendid, they will get worse. Success inspires overconfidence and excess. If things seem dismal, they will get better. Crisis spawns opportunity and progress. Our triumphs and follies follow a rhythm that, though it can be influenced, cannot be repealed."

I never read The Trouble with Prosperity, but I have modulated my life according to its thesis—choosing that safe middle ground, buying a house with two bedrooms because, well, we only needed two, and putting nearly every dollar I made or had against the mortgage and my son's college fund. I live on the vaunted Main Line of Philadelphia (where gardens and farms still loll between trees, where the schools are good, where the communities are fine), and my decisions have frankly often set me apart. Smallified me, if you will. I lost a friend because of what I would not buy, because of what I did not have. She stopped inviting me to her parties.

I have, I realized, lived my literary life the same way. I have said no to TV and film adaptations of my nonfiction, shutting the door to some version of income and notoriety (but also, I thought and still think, opening the door to peace of mind). I have sought the right editor above the right advance in every case save for that of my second book, when I was enticed to go with a house that ultimately did not care about my future as a writer. Lesson learned. Mistake not to be repeated. All I've ever wanted as a writer is the chance to publish again, the chance to commune with other readers and writers, a reason to keep writing. I have wanted, desperately, sometimes consumingly, the editorial yes, we will publish this and you, and even now, 11 books in, it's not so easy.

Yesterday, reading the magnificent introduction to the Penguin Classics version of Steinbeck's book, I came upon these words from Steinbeck, which seem both timeless to me and extremely prescient. They are about writing, yes, but they are also about the way we live our lives, about the need, perhaps, not to want overly much. To be satisfied.

"I have always wondered why no author has survived a best-seller. Now I know. The publicity and fan-fare are just as bad as they would be for a boxer. One gets self-conscious and that's the end of one's writing."