{"id":627,"date":"2009-03-03T02:14:48","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T07:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/?p=627"},"modified":"2009-03-03T02:14:48","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T07:14:48","slug":"annals-of-culture-late-bloomers-reporting-essays-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/03\/annals-of-culture-late-bloomers-reporting-essays-the-new-yorker\/","title":{"rendered":"Annals of Culture: Late Bloomers: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others. In biographies of C\u00e9zanne<\/a>, Louis-Auguste invariably comes across as a kind of grumpy philistine, who didn\u2019t appreciate his son\u2019s genius. But Louis-Auguste didn\u2019t have to support C\u00e9zanne all those years. He would have been within his rights to make his son get a real job, just as Sharie might well have said no to her husband\u2019s repeated trips to the chaos of Haiti<\/a>. She could have argued that she had some right to the life style of her profession and status\u2014that she deserved to drive a BMW<\/a>, which is what power couples in North Dallas<\/a> drive, instead of a Honda Accord<\/a>, which is what she settled for.
\nBut she believed in her husband\u2019s art,<\/strong> or perhaps, more simply, she believed in her husband, <\/strong>the same way Zola<\/a> and Pissarro<\/a> and Vollard<\/a> and\u2014in his own, querulous way\u2014Louis-Auguste must have believed in C\u00e9zanne. Late bloomers<\/a>\u2019 stories are invariably love stories, and this may be why we have such difficulty with them. We\u2019d like to think that mundane matters like loyalty, steadfastness, and the willingness to keep writing checks to support what looks like failure have nothing to do with something as rarefied as genius. But sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it\u2019s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.<\/strong>
\n\u201cSharie never once brought up money, not once\u2014never,\u201d Fountain said. She was sitting next to him, and he looked at her in a way that made it plain that he understood how much of the credit for \u201cBrief Encounters\u201d belonged to his wife. His eyes welled up with tears. \u201cI never felt any pressure from her,\u201d he said. \u201cNot even covert, not even implied.\u201d \u2666<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Annals of Culture: Late Bloomers: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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