Sigrid Rausing, publisher of Granta: "Wow"

Wednesday 9/17/25

An exchange from yesterday into today. To me:

Yes, I do remember the Guggenheim post. What a world of self promoting and self congratulation--it's surreal. Looked up Sigrid Rausing. Wow. And your telling me she didn't just buy her reputation on the street by trading favors and self-funding her own publication career. Unbelievable.   

I think your drive to produce art is incomparable and will sustain you. I do wish you had a supportive partner. I can only imagine how challenging that must be. I often think how lucky I am but then I also spend all my time working for others, almost by reflex. It's increasingly strange as I get older. But don't worry about age. It really doesn't matter. I still remember the saying of my brother John's climbing partner--"live your life like a thrown knife." There's no take-backs. Endurance, stamina--you have it in spades.  

From me:

1.

Rausing inherited billions of dollars (not hyperbole). As did her brother, who hid his dead wife's body for months after she overdosed, which Sigrid supported. In Sigrid's book, she blamed the dead wife for embarrassing her family such that it became okay to hide her corpse. That's all on the blog, too. In multiple entries. But here's one that I quickly pulled up...which also includes a Pulitzer and Guggenheim winner...

https://www.colinfleminglit.com/post/prose-off-story-in-granta-by-pulitzer-winner-joshua-cohen-put-forward-by-supporter-of-dead-body-hid

This is also Joshua Cohen-related:

https://www.colinfleminglit.com/post/prose-off-story-by-guggenheim-recipient-and-pulitzer-prize-winner-joshua-cohen-in-the-new-yorker-pu

Everything is given out--awards, New Yorker acceptances, book deals, genius grants, etc.--without the work even being read. Merely glanced at, after the deal is done. There is no one on earth who is even capable of thinking that the likes of those Cohen excerpts come close to what is by me immediately after them. It's just not even a possible human thought. And this case is no different than any of the others. 

Time to work on "Mouse" again and see where it's at. 

From me:

2.

And it still could actually work/change. Just don't 100% consign me to it never working, always suffering, never getting what I deserve, never having the impact I can have, but writing, creating, writing, creating, because of "stamina" and "drive." I don't have those things in the way you think I have those things (or so it seems to me right now). Those things are products of my ability, which is beyond all. And I believe I proved that long ago. I don't see how anyone could dispute that if they look at my work. My body of work (and we both know that with all that's out there, it's but a fraction of what is here). What I make. But the drive and the stamina comes from that--the knowledge of what that is, and the knowledge of what it could do if given a chance, which it and I have never had.