Mister Faded Glory | misterfadedglory.com

Oh, you’re wondering about the book? Still soliciting agents, batting about .500. That means, 50 percent outright rejections and 50 percent ignoring me altogether. Still, it doesn’t pay to be discouraged.

The market is crying for a story weaving together the insecurities and self-obsession of the twentysomething male lifestyle. Not everyone is a Lothario or Gordon Gekko. Some worry and fret and opine to a fault, frustrated guys who can’t quite grow up, muster self-confidence, get laid or even successfully extricate themself from unhappiness. Some guys serve as the poster children for wasted potential in the arid heartland. And it’s about time someone wrote a story about that, while paying tribute to the casually bereft Midwest.

Oh. Thanks, again, Chuck, for taking the words right out of my mouth. Thanks for probably writing this in a weekend while These Monks took me nearly five years. Thanks for working in the Saved By the Bell references effortlessly while I struggle to perfectly capture the whimsical follies of 1990s children. Thanks. But the world can read both, right?

Regardless, if Klosterman‘s usual hand-wringing and self-righteous contemporizing robs me of any chance for mainstream (or any stream) success, I’ve got no choice to be inspired. (And seriously, I’m reading that Klosterman book first chance I get. I’ll like it, and I’ll wish I had written it. Not that I’m not proud myself.)

I’ve got no choice simply because of this Malcolm Gladwell piece, celebrating the fortitude and tenacity and sheer survival through heartbreak, failure, and apprehension. Perhaps the most inspiring profile I’ve ever read, it’s also prescient. Maybe genius isn’t always directly related to precocity. Maybe, in fact, true geniuses simply know enough to keep improving oneself. Maybe true geniuses know how to improve themselves, and that makes them genius. Perhaps genius only emerges when someone’s been around enough to learn it all, and know more than others.

Or, perhaps, it manifests only out of sheer talent. Juxtapose Gladwell‘s Late Bloomers with NY Magazine‘s profile of stats wunderkind Nate Silver, creator of Baseball Prospectus and also the reason I wasn’t too worried on Election Day. Silver is absolutely a genius – exhibiting the kind of intelligence, knack and brilliance for statistics most of us yearn for in any discipline. But is he any more genius than Ben Fountain, finally a success after years of starting over? Is Fountain any different than any starving artist – we discover them all too late?

Finally, what about the genius whose gifts are subtle – who effortlessly inspires those around them? How does that fit in? How do we know Silver and Fountain exhibit even a modicum of common sense or decency? Could it be genius is inherently related to charisma, or the unique talent to embody energetic passion simply to do one’s best, never seeming to yield? Maybe inspiration is the most sincere form of genius after all.

Quite simply, maybe the truth about geniuses is they never stop to ponder whether they are or aren’t; maybe they aren’t narcissistic at all. Maybe it’s not quite worth it to aspire to genius; you can’t quite get there if you’re always wondering Why Not?

The truth? Who knows. For those of us who toil fruitlessly, failing at several tasks and learning from each, and experiencing true giftedness only in all-too-fleeting moments of brilliance, we simply have to hope for our Fountain story. Or conversely, hope to discover some skill we embody as well as Silver does stats.

Maybe it’s writing. Maybe it’s blogging. Maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s the simple, daily process of hoping to be better tomorrow than what you are today, no matter what better is.

Maybe. At the very least, I yearn to find out. And that, in itself, is something.

Isn’t it?