“There is also to be considered ‘the Matthew effect,’ which was first described by Robert K. Merton. In a series of interviews with Nobel laureates, Merton found, ‘They repeatedly observe that eminent scientists get disproportionately great credit for their contributions to science while relatively unknown scientists tend to get disproportionately little credit for comparable contributions.’ Merton gave the effect its name based on chapter 25, verse 29, of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: ‘For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

This gloomy thesis comes from an unusual source: Thomas McNamee’s excellent 2007 biography-cum-institutional-history, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, which I just finished reading. I got a lot out of the book on a couple of different levels. First of all, it’s an undeniably great yarn, full of struggle and triumph, sex and drugs, visionaries and kooks, you name it. But it was also instructive, as a writer, to try and tease out the underlying architecture and see how you go about constructing this sort of epic tale–which (based on the end notes) appears to have taken at least three years of interviews and god knows how many more of plain old observation and research. 

And as someone with a heap of experience with (and love for) dysfunctional workplaces and the wildeyed dreamers who make them go it was interesting–eye-opening, even–to discover that someone like Waters, an undeniable visionary whose accomplishments are legion, also sounds like a neurotic, overcommitted control freak and a total pain in the ass to work for. (And McNamee, though clearly a fan, manages to make both her virtues and vices crystal clear.) I still don’t understand how Chez Panisse has ever managed to make any money.

Anyhow, the thought at the top popped up in relation to this last point, in discussing the frustrations of Waters’ partners–in particular Panisse chef Paul Bertolli–as her star shot into the stratosphere and they were left back in Berkeley to pay the bills and mop the floors and generally do all the actual work.

Forgive the slip sideways here–because this has nothing to do with McNamee’s book or Chez Panisse or cooking or food or anything, really–but the Merton line has just stuck with me. Though I could pull out plenty of examples in which luck begets luck, and pain begets pain, I’ve never fully subscribed to this worldview. Until now. It seems particularly resonant in these bailout days, as material benefits slip daily from those who have scrabbled to get them while those to whom they come easily sit atop the heap, their asses and assets protected by this new socialism for the rich.

I don’t want to be this pessimistic. But I can’t stop wondering: Is this it? Is acclaim and success gifted only to a golden few? And if so, what, exactly, do life’s winners owe the losers? Anything? Probably not.

In other news (speaking of winners), my copy of the Alinea book came in the mail yesterday. Haven’t done much but page through it yet, but boy is it pretty.