A Reader Like Sue

Emily Dickinson is, in some ways, the ultimate artist. A recluse with no readership save her sister-in-law, Sue, and the occasional correspondent. Nobody could make artistic demands on her except herself.

My childhood best friend pushed me to watch the Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso when it first came out. He deeply connected to the main character—a man who tried to be positive even to his own detriment. Optimistic to a fault. Ted Lasso has a sign he puts up in his locker room: "Believe." Saccharine? Maybe. But we all need a little sweetness. That's my friend.

I pushed my friend to watch a different Apple show: Dickinson. Hailey Steinfeld plays Emily Dickinson and I've never related to a fictional character more. In the second episode, Emily convinces her father to hire a maid, over the disapproval of her old-fashioned mother. When her mother attempts to make her do chores anyway, Emily objects:

Emily: Mother, what part of "we got a maid" don't you understand?

Mother: I beg your pardon?

Emily: The whole reason we got Maggie was so I don't have to do chores. So I can just have time to myself.

Mother: Time to yourself? To do what?

Emily: To take dictation from God.

This is classic Emily. In another episode, she pretends to be sick to get some alone time. To write. She writes breathlessly. And while the ironic "dictation from God" is what it looks like to her bewildered family (who on more than one occasion suggest she is both "insane" and a "genius"), Emily's art is the product of intense work and revision. And then she saves it, toying with sharing it publicly but never quite doing so.

As we know historically, she actually asked her sister to burn her poems, but they were published instead. A small fraction of them. Emily is a pure artist, writing to play, to create beauty. I don't know if I'm so pure of motivation. Having a (small) readership would be nice.

But I do share with Emily, at least the Emily of the show, both artistic hopes and an ego. A sense of wanting to achieve immortality, not through broad public renown, but through the satisfaction of mastering a craft and wielding through it the awesome ability to create something sublime, even for a few.

Let me write something that makes one person shiver. One person get goosebumps. One person weep. One person feel the way Sue felt when reading Emily.

That one person would mean more than a million others.