The Writers Afterlife. Richard Vetere

it’s the place itself,” Joe assured me.

      We were in a garden with so many colorful flowers and small trees and bushes everywhere. The garden had some metal and marble fountains and an occasional metal table and chair. Some writers sat at these tables and others milled around the garden.

      I quickly recognized Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Ernest Hemingway, and then Thomas Chatterton and Sir John Suckling from famous portraits of them. All of these writers sat alone at their tables, reading their own works, their heads tilted down, their fingers turning the pages. They didn’t seem to notice one another at all.

      “They achieved fame but at such an awful price,” Joe said softly.

      I could see they were lonely and filled with regret. Hemingway, bullish and wide, was clearly cranky. Plath was pale and meek.

      “Such an irony,” I said.

      “Alone for all time. They are famous, yes, but alone for all time. A joyless eternity.”

      Then I saw this southern man, John Kennedy Toole, who only became famous when he killed himself.

      “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s wrong. His mother brought his novel to Robert Penn Warren after her son died and begged for his help.”

      “Toole went back?”

      “Yes, he had a week to persuade anyone that he was worthy of fame. So he convinced his mother, who had never read any of his work before that. She then took his unpublished manuscript to Robert Penn Warren.”

      Just then, Hemingway’s head opened up right where he had placed the rifle. “What’s that?” I exclaimed.

      “Their moment of death haunts them throughout eternity,” Joe told me. “The newbie up here is David Foster Wallace. Such a sad case. He was famous, loved, and admired, yet he took his own life.”

      Then Plath grew green and yellow and coughed just like she must have done when she put her head in the oven. But it only lasted a few seconds. When it was over, she went back to reading her works.

      I asked to see Herman Melville, and Joe took me to him. He was as stern as I’d expected and there he was on a dock. Ahab was standing beside Melville and they looked surprisingly similar. They were standing side by side in a very stiff way looking out to the ocean, and I imagined they were scanning the horizon to see if they could catch a glimpse of Moby Dick. At first I found it odd that Melville, with all his children and his long-suffering wife, had chosen Ahab, his own creation, to spend eternity with. But then I thought perhaps it made sense, as the two men clearly had a deep understanding of each other.

      We went on to visit Hawthorne who sat in a picturesque cottage writing with a quill pen; outside his window all the characters who populated his short stories and novels enjoyed quiet conversation.

      The next-to-last place Joe took me was to the top of a very high hill. I looked down and saw thousands and thousands of writers. “Sixty thousand to be exact,” Joe said. “Not one of them is famous. Not one,” Joe repeated. “And every one of them on the threshold. But they truly tip the other way into total anonymity.”

      The thought of total facelessness, namelessness, and insignificance made me tremble. “I want to see them.”

      “No, you don’t,” Joe said.

      I could see a town with sidewalks and streetlamps. I saw men and women milling around. I slowly made my way down the hill and heard Joe call to me. “Don’t.”

      But I did and I regretted it. I saw those thousands of souls on the verge of fame and I could see the one thing they had in common. They had no faces. Not one of them. They looked up at me, probably sensing my presence. They were exactly that: faceless.

      Joe reached my side. “They do not have a chance of ever being recognized. They can leave their hell but they are all too stubborn to go. They wait for the impossible to happen. Sad thing is, some of them are truly talented and some of them wrote wonderful things in their lifetimes.”