the inner shlemiel

Tonight I went to see a documentary "Laughing in the Darkness" about the Yiddish storyteller Sholem Aleichem who created the character Tevvye, the milkman; the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" was based on his stories. The story of Sholem Aleichem's life encompasses much more than his biography -- it's the story of eastern European Jewry and its transformation or attempt at transformation into contemporary life, particularly American life. It's the cultural clash between a very provincial people (not simply a religion but a culture) living in a remote part of the world (the pale of Russia for the most part) and Modern Times. When I write this, it occurs to me that the culture clash was not peculiar to Jews  -- Italian, Swedish, Chinese, Hungarian -- most cultures experienced the same confusion, the same loss of identity as Jews which is why Charlie Chaplin could satirize it so potently. We all had to become something very different than what we'd been in our effort to become American, to fit in to the U.S of A. (Some cultures like Native Americans are still traumatized by the effort at transformation.) And for some, the transformation was never complete which is why we still have movie-makers like Woody Allen or a movie like the Coen Brothers "A Serious Man" -- which humorously describe this culture clash that continues to occur generation after generation. That feeling of being ill-equipped to fit it, of even wondering whether fitting-in merits the loss involved? What is that loss?  It's a loss of a certain humanity, of accepting human foibles, of not needing or even wanting to measure up to the bar of financial success or any kind of "success" -- it's the right be a schlemiel, a slacker, a low-achiever -- and that being okay. In "Fiddler on the Roof" Tevvye sings, "If I were a rich man..." The original Sholem Aleichem story was "If I was a Rothchild..."but Tevvye is a milkman; he's not ever going to be a Rothschild and frankly we need more Tevvye's than Rothschilds, don't we? The truth is not all of us want to spend our lives becoming rich and famous. We don't aspire to be Bill Gates or even Steve Jobs. And yet we live in a culture that constantly extolls achievement, that presses us to achieve, achieve and achieve so more...no wonder so many people are depressed; no wonder so many people feel not good enough. I was actually asked that question today in an interview about a book of mine that's just been published. How does it feel to be a writer who keeps writing even if the path is not the Pulitzer (that's not how the question was phrased but that's what I thought the interviewer meant). I was kind of surprised, but I attempted to say: If you like to write and you do write and you have any success at all, like publication by a local publisher -- hey, that's great!!! And I was greatly cheered by seeing Sholem Aleichem pull out his notebook every chance he got, just to write, cause that's what you do, that's what feels good, that's who you are whether or not it's recognized or acclaimed. You do what you do because you're claiming your humanity -- and that's the goal. That's always been the goal.