I’ve never had great success, which is lucky, because I have seen it ruin many previously excellent writers and thinkers. This is an age-old phenomenon, but it has got worse in our era.
The best business nowadays is selling to the 1 per cent. A caste of pundits has accordingly arisen to supply them with thoughts, or at least talking points. These pundits make decent money themselves, especially on the speakers’ circuit, which is now the place where original thinkers go to die. Here are some case studies:
You are a historian. You spend years in the archives producing good books. You emerge blinking into the light, turn out to be fluent on television, and pretty soon are getting $25,000 to pontificate in Dubai on “What’s next for China?” (The 0.1 per cent want to know the future, because that’s where the money is.) When you aren’t being an oracle, you are explaining why you were right five years ago. Eventually you realise you aren’t a historian any more. You’re a content provider who plays a parody of himself on TV.
You are a reporter. You are multilingual, hardworking and sit in ordinary people’s homes trying to understand what’s going on in their country. But once you are a star, you become a talking head in a complimentary limousine, separated from your material. Now you’re sitting in a prince’s palace trying to understand what’s going on in his country. He’s charming, he loves your work, and over dinner you realise that his ostensibly self-serving power play is in fact intended only to root out corruption.
The work that survives from past eras often wasn’t done by the biggest names. John Galsworthy and JB Priestley were star writers in Britain in the first half of the past century but no longer. Meanwhile, George Orwell went almost unnoticed until 1945, less than five years before his death, when he finally managed to get Animal Farm published. By analogy, today’s most interesting thinker is not the fiftysomething multimillionaire giving the keynote address, but the ignored 30-year-old blogger.
Still, who can say no to money and fame? For speaking engagements, do contact my agent.