Eventually, perhaps, we'll outgrow these insecure and peevish attitudes. Meanwhile, they do help to keep success in perspective, for "success," in terms of fame and fortune, is a peculiarly modernist American word that, except in its most poignantly ironic sense, has no place in the vocabulary of the evolved. The only success, for example, with which a writer might be meaningfully concerned, is how successfully his or her adjectives exude their flavors, his or her syntax drums out its cadence, his or her metaphors eternalize their phrases, or whether or not, when their nouns meet their verbs, the verbs yell out, "Gotcha, baby!" For the task of the writer is not to attain recognition or reward but to meditate upon our passing world and, through the working magic of language, awaken in the solitary reader a sense of wonder at that world.
In that philosophical mode then, I want to reach out to those misguided little tiddlypoops who've maligned my books. I want to reach out and say to them, "Tiddlypoops! Get a pencil! You haft der vrong noomber! And you can kiss my old rusty dusty—and the float it rode in on!"
Rick Dahms
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Yes, friends, in the ego realm, which is a very silly realm indeed, acclaim is pleasant and rejection disagreeable, but since ultimately there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose, neither really matters in the least. What matters is that we enlarge our souls, light up our brains, and liberate our spirits. What matters is that we hop on a strange torpedo and ride it to wherever it's going, ride it with affection and humor and grace, because beyond affection, humor, and grace, all that remains is noise and sociology.
What matters is that we never forget that the little paper match of one individual's spirit can outshine all the treasures of commerce, out-glint all the armaments of government, and out-sparkle the entire disco ball of history. Yet, at its deepest level, even the human spirit, like everything else in the universe, is only a weird dance of electrified nothingness. The undulating shadows this dance throws upon the walls of our sensorium we call "reality." Because they are merely shadows, it's unwise to take them too seriously—but it may be equally unwise not to cherish them.
So, in closing, I want to say unashamedly that I flat-out cherish this neck of the woods, this damp neck with its necklace of glacier ice and Blue Moon neon, with its subtle perfume of salt marsh and espresso steam, with its flaming hickey of rebellion and independence. I love this fine and flaky community and I wholeheartedly thank its fine and flaky citizens—especially those who are here this evening—for putting up with me for 35 fine and flaky years. Seattle has been good to me, and I hope that in some small way, I've been good to it, as well.
Read TOM ROBBINS: My Life and Work.
