To Be Or Not To Be...Famous

Let's face it: now, more than ever, we live in an age of celebrity. Sure, celebrities have always been around, at least since the days of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Now, though, half of our celebrities are famous for no discernible reason whatsoever. The truth is, our society seems to have morphed into a strange kind of Warholian nightmare.

The purpose of this post is not to moan about society, however. It's to point out that in literature, the work and the work alone is what matters. That's not to say there have never been any literary celebrities (as opposed to famous writers). Ernest Hemingway was arguably one of the biggest celebrities of the 20^th century. F. Scott Fitzgerald was nothing short of iconic during his heyday. As for Mark Twain: let's just say the term international celebrity didn't first apply to Kim Kardashian.

What's important to remember, though, is that there are about as many stories of literary titans eschewing publicity as there are of those luxuriating in it. J.D. Salinger, for instance, spent the last chunk of his life tucked away in Cornish, New Hampshire, granting no interviews and refusing to publish a single new work of fiction. Post-Modernist heavyweight Thomas Pynchon has never given an interview in his entire life, nor has he allowed his picture to appear on any of his books (that's right, a bestselling author actually prefers it if no one knows what he looks like).

Then there are those authors like Cormac McCarthy who, although not entirely averse to publicity, certainly don't much care for it. Interviews with McCarthy, who has penned such famous works as Blood Meridian and The Road, are few and far between.

The truth is serious writers who avoid the public eye often have good reason to. Words are far more provocative than an empty smile, after all – no matter how beautiful that smile may be. No one knows this better than Salmon Rushdie, who, back in the late 80s, had a death sentence put on him by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Apparantly, the Ayatollah found Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (which, for the record, has nothing to do with devil worship) worthy of homicide. 

Of course there are all different kinds of literary figures. Some write in a classical style while others tend to be more avant-garde. Some write rich, morally complex tales while others (to me, at least) write well-crafted rubbish. What all serious writers know, however, is that – when it comes to writing - it's the quality of the work that counts, not the hip-quotient.

Kinda refreshing, don't you think? After all, the pen truly is mightier than the sword – and sometimes even the camera.