I’m way behind in reading Publishers Weekly, which will explain why I’ve only just now come across something intriguing from the September 28th issue. In a profile of Daniel Goldin, owner of Boswell Books, Goldin quotes from the book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, by restaurateur Danny Meyer.

Goldin shares how Meyer responded when asked what principle guided him as a new small business owner. He supposedly said, “I don’t want to be the best restaurant. I want to be the customer’s favorite restaurant.”

When I first read that passage, I liked it. But once it started to sink it, I didn’t like at all.

Why?

Because I think an important clause is missing.

I might have accepted the quote if it had been instead written as, “I don’t want to be the best restaurant. I want to be the customer’s favorite restaurant as long as I can do so while staying true to myself.” Perhaps I’m supposed to take that as implied, but without reading the book from which the quote was plucked, I can’t be sure.

I’ve often said that I’d rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I am not. And that’s as true for my fiction as it is for any other other aspect of my personality. Sure, I’d love to be your favorite writer—but I need to be my own favorite writer first. If I have to like me any less in order to make you like me any more … well … it’s not going to happen.

It isn’t that I want my words to be disliked by anyone. It’s just that the most important thing is to be (to disagree with the first sentence from the Meyer quote) the best me I can be. If you end up liking my stories, too, that’s gravy for which I’m sincerely grateful. But as far as I’m concerned, Meyer’s second sentence will never trump his first.

I do want to be the best restaurant.