Immortality

September. Dusty classroom. Desks covered with inked labels of rock bands and declarations of love. The teacher slouches in the chair—exhaustion in her eyes. The World Literature textbook—bought used—interprets the thoughts of the greatest thinkers. No room for debate. Dostoevsky, the giant of darkness, the mighty philosopher, stares at you from the worn pages of the book.

October. The leaves on the trees die. The grass dies. Everything dies. Everything passes, disappears, dissolves, becomes forgotten. Only the bearded man with his gloomy gaze stares at you. He is above time.

You wonder about death—this unavoidable end of all. The oblivion, the instant amnesia of the world, moving forward as if you’ve never existed. It terrifies you. Until you see the answer on the pages of the textbook. Everything dies, but Dostoevsky is eternal.

It doesn’t matter who is in power and who is in jail, what continent is burning under the sun, or which species are disappearing. Despite inflation, political imbalance, and financial crisis, despite the fact that the attention span of an average human being is fifteen seconds, Dostoevsky remains. He has found the way to immortality.

He is not the only one, of course. There were Alexander the Great and Napoleon, and many others who ruled and conquered. But Dostoevsky wasn’t a king or a murderer—he was a writer. He placed one word after another. Words are accessible to everyone, even to the most unfortunate beggar with a hungry dog.

You get inspired; you decide to become like Dostoevsky. You tell your parents about it. Your parents are in shock because they know that the path of a writer is fraught with tears and disappointment. They say, “No, no way, we will not feed you for the rest of your life. Here is an excellent school—they will teach you a profession that guarantees a stable income.”

But you are stubborn. You get a job at a fast-food restaurant. You cook French fries and chicken and refill soda. At night, you write your immortal novel.

It turns out to be much harder than you imagined. You thought you’d sit at your computer and the words would pour out of you, like rice from a torn bag. And each word would be a brilliant shining diamond, set in precious metal, sparkling, singing.

But the words get stuck somewhere between heaven and the keyboard, and you weep, searching for the right word. You fill yourself with energy drinks and stumble in the darkness, looking for inspiration. You collapse, exhausted, and wake up in agony. Your novel is too romantic, too melodramatic, too verbose. There are too many details and not enough details, depending on whom you ask. And Dostoevsky looks at you with the same gloomy gaze. The beard in the photo seems to move. He says, “Shall we go play cards instead?”

This is what you wanted to do, right? To write. And you write. After three drafts (not so bad—Leo Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace by hand seven times), you send your manuscript to one publishing house after another. Silence and rejections, rejections and silence. Each rejection chips away at your soul, piece by piece.

But you remember Stephen King’s suggestion: “Get a bigger nail.”

It’s March. You beat the system. Your manuscript has been accepted. It’s spring; the French fries are crisp, and soda is hissing. Dreams become reality. You smile at Dostoevsky’s portrait with malicious joy.

You can taste the fame on your tongue. You can almost touch a world of endless possibilities. Your words, your thoughts will live forever, for generations to come. Years from now, students will sit in a dusty classroom. They will open the textbook and look at your portrait. They will envy you because you have found the way to immortality.

Except there are no requests for interviews; there are no invitations to read your novel at book festivals. When you tell someone you are a published author, they say, “It’s great, man. Can you pick up my shift on Sunday?”

After work, you go to a public library to rent a movie. You stumble upon a mountain of used books on sale. You look at the titles. So many authors have not made it to the top. So many, and you don’t recognize a single name on the covers—not even your own.