Flops

What makes something a hit, and something else a flop? Quality, obviously is the short answer, but not all hits and misses can be differentiated based on how good they are. Sometimes the whims of the buying public are just plain . . . well, whimsical.

Geroge R. R. Martin (of Game of Thrones fame) was a young writer whose first three novels had been reasonably successful, each one doing better than the last. When he produced his fourth novel, The Armageddon Rag, his publishers were very enthusiastic. They gave him a big advance. They publicized the book. It was met with critical acclaim. Movie rights were optioned. And then in George R. R. Martin’s words, “nobody bought it.” The failure of that book almost destroyed Martin’s writing career. Suddenly nobody wanted to publish anything of his anymore. George eventually landed on his feet and, as it turned out, has now done quite well for himself. I have not read the Armageddon Rag myself (though it is on my to-read list) so I can’t comment on its quality. But then neither can anyone else who never read it, so why did it flop?

Herman Melville had a moderately successful writing career going when he sunk his heart and soul into Moby Dick. Critics didn’t like it and the public didn’t buy it. He made a few more attempts at writing, but they didn’t take either so he gave up. He quit writing novels and became a customs inspector. It wasn’t until twenty years after Melville’s death that people started taking notice of Moby Dick. Now it is considered a classic. A fat lot of good that did Melville.

Johann Sebastian Bach. Ever heard of him? He was a moderately successful composer in his lifetime, though his son (also a composer) Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach apologized for his father’s “old fashioned music.” Bach’s music was largely forgotten for a hundred years until Mendelssohn started looking at it and decided, hey, there’s some good stuff in here. His ‘old fashioned music’ caught on.

On the other hand, how is it that the Michael Bay movie Pearl Harbor made $450 million at the box office? I mean have you seen that movie??? I tried. I couldn’t finish it. I guess the public wants what it wants and you will hurt your brain if you try to figure out why. You should just try to produce good art and hope that somebody notices it.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon, or the other usual online sources)

Star Liner