The Great Writer's Fate, Part Ii

...Is impressing some professor, or some critic with pretentious airs, worth telling my own children that their father will never be there? Is acting like a profound wit that can 'peel back deep mysteries’ worth not seeing my daughter laugh on her birthday? She’s turning three. And for all my father’s insight has mankind changed in the slightest? He always claimed he’d ‘inspire them,’ but still all of our flaws persist. Maybe he will be remembered, but to me that seems a small gain for living a life in madness, and causing your own family pain. No one will read my pot-boilers and proclaim me as some great sage, but if it means I keep my wife I’ll pot-boil into old age. And if I never have ‘a muse,’ I’ll not cheat and take a lover, never will I say to my kids come on out and meet your half-brother. Though critics may look down at me, it is I who think they’re insane; you give people needed release from real life when you entertain. If they declare that is a bad thing, it is they who’ve got it all wrong, Shakespeare gave the masses drama, and he’s reigned supreme for so long… They’d have me give up life for art, that’s what they think makes a man rate, but I like life too much to leave, I will not share the great writer’s fate.