Modernism

Here are two interesting quotes:
1. "Success and failure on the public level never mattered to me; in fact I feel much more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years."
That's from a letter written by Samuel Beckett.

2. "A gap had opened up between the ideal of modernism as the antithesis of mass culture and the reality of America as a marketplace in which absolutely anything could be bought and sold.... When someone happily observed that one of the concerts (Varese and Ruggles being the chief composers) had drawn a full house, Ruggles accused his own organisation of 'catering to the public'. As so often in the modernist saga, revolutionary impulses went hand in hand with intolerance asnd resentment."
That's from Alex Ross's "The Rest is Noise".

I used to be a tutor on a Creative Writing course and a good deal of time was taken up by would-be writers wanting to know or giving information about possible markets for their work: would Best magazine be good for the short story with a twist? How much would they pay? Is it worth trying Women's Weekly? What about Mills and Boon?

There was this insatiable desire to be published - somewhere, anywhere. I know what it's like. I've experienced it. Now I don't care..... Yes I do. Yes I do.
But never go to a vanity publisher or to a friend.... Why not? Samuel Beckett did.