An exchange at https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/question/view/2810 has inspired this Q:
Which of the following epitaphs would you prefer?
(S)he had 432 short stories published in international, widely read magazines; and won £372,600 in prize money in a wide selection of writing competitions... but didn't write a truly original sentence in 54 years of literary fame.
(S)he never made a single penny from 54 years of writing, and died an unknown pauper. But today - 24 years after her/his death - is considered a genius who paved the way for generations of original writing talent.
We at La Gr@not@ can't help you achieve the first. Wed be PROUD to help y towards the second.
Strange question… strange answers!
@ Lorraine: Cute way to dodge the question. One doesn’t need to be dead to choose an epitaph. Not many people take the trouble, so most end up with something sentimental and sometimes trite.
@ Eva: Tastes and values differ. Fads change. Harold Robbins and Mickey Spillane made fortunes writing “steamy” novels, well seeded with the kind of “sexy” titillation that sold in the 60s and 70s. I assume that they were both able to buy yachts, several penthouse apartments, villas in the south of France and the company of sycophants. But their soft-porn is old hat these days, when even mainstream novelists are much more daring. And I wouldn’t trade a sentence of Marge Piercy’s or Lewis Carroll's for the entire output of both Robbins and Spillane.
I was searching the Internet with the words “people famous in their lifetime, forgotten today”. Without the speech marks, because I assume there aren’t any web-pages with that series of words written exactly like that. I didn’t, in fact, find what I was looking for. However, that search did trawl up the following: “Top 10 Now Famous Artists Who Died Poor and Unknown” (http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-now-famous-artists-died-ignominy.php)
I was expecting to find Van Gogh there (he’s #1), but was surprised to find J.S. Bach (#7). But the compilers of the list point out that he was famous in his Lifetime AS AN ORGANIST: NOT AS A COMPOSER. To think that one of the 2 greatest geniuses (together with Beethoven: yes, I agree… personal taste again!) of music composing of all time was pretty much ignored in that capacity until long after his death!
I would rather be Bach than Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber… even if he is dead. Lloyd Webber will pass away: Bach is immortal.
Literary figures in the list: Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. All writers who will be cherished long alter Spillane, Robbins – and Barbara Cartland – will have faded into obscurity.
Strange questions, but not difficult. I would of course prefer the first. Just imagine - she has been able to live by her writing, she has had a lot of readers for many years - and who is this pompous critic who has gone through evertyhing she has written, deciding that there is nothing of literary value?
What is the value of being recognized after death??????
I'd rather not have either just yet, thanks!
A still very much alive Lorraine