My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dressed respectably.
George Bernard Shaw said those words some time ago and I suspect his tongue was firmly in his cheek when he said them. Shaw, private writer, was also a public figure, as are most published authors. Even if you aren’t recognizable to the masses on the streets, your readers know you and it’s impossible not to let bits and pieces of the personal you seep into your manuscripts or the many tools we use these days to promote ourselves, like the blog you’re reading now. Ask most writers and they’ll tell you they wouldn’t eschew a little notoriety, enough to sell a few more books, anyway. That real heavy-duty sort of fame? That’s a different story.
Even when writers achieve fame, it doesn’t come at one tenth the level that movie or film folk do. No phalanx of photogs are dogging Stephen King’s every move; no one is following Nora into the supermarket. I’ve been recognized a couple of times, but my fans only had well wishes for me. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be someone like Britney Spears and have millions of people watching my every move, hoping, more often than not, that I will embarrass myself in some way, appear without my underwear, endanger my health or jeopardize my career or my right to raise my children–anything that will make me a more interesting dinner table conversation.
In the last few months while people have been consumed with Britneywatching, labeling her a “pop tart” to other names I can’t print here, I’ve wondered where our compassion has gone as a people. There used to be a time in this country where you wouldn’t have published a negative word about a celebrity without risking being labeled a scandal sheet. Now, this kind of nonsense is on the front page of some the most, ahem, respectable papers in the nation. And rather than see her behavior as an enormous, nation-wide cry for help, even more ridicule is heaped upon her. And how old is this child? 26?
I know I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground at that age. And thankfully, I’ve always had a tremendous support system around me, to ground me, to pick me up when I’m down, to laugh and to cry with. People to pull me back from the edge when I’m standing too close. People I look out for as well.
That’s all you can ask for as a person, public or otherwise. And maybe what we owe each other is just a bit more kindness. That’s my take on it anyway.
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