Almost famous
The celebrity of a writer
For the purposes of this piece, I reluctantly accept that I am well-known, in some circles. I have never been able to believe it - how is it possible, when I sit on my own all day? - but I suppose I have some objective proof. My work and I have been a question on Jeopardy more than once, and the question presupposes that someone in the USA, someone outside my immediate circle of American friends, might know the answer. I have been a solution in crossword puzzles, too. Recently a friend was watching Arsenal in Spain, a Spanish broadcast with Spanish commentary, and this happened:
(I am sorry - I can’t seem to edit out the second half, the bit about sausage rolls, but it’s quite funny.)
A guy in Spain said that. In Spanish. And if you are me, you think, Stop! What are you doing? Nobody will know what the hell you are talking about.
Because fame as a writer is nothing like proper fame. I was once walking down the street with a former soap star whose character had recently been killed off, and every single person we went past shouted his fictional name at him, and enquired after the health of his fictional wife and his fictional boss. He nodded and smiled, while we talked about how he was intending to make ends meet. That seems like the worst version of fame. I have sold a million copies of a book more than once; if I were a TV show, those numbers would get me cancelled, in the showbiz sense (an attempted clarification, I see now, that really doesn’t clear things up, seeing as it turns out that every male in showbiz has done something awful.) I am happy not to be properly famous. My soap-star companion, and a couple of friends whose celebrity is still current, have taught me how miserable that life is. I can write, make a living, and not have to deal with unlooked-for intrusion. But being faintly famous, or half-famous, or whatever a writer is, can still be uncomfortable.
Three stories.
I was in the barber. (I used to go, before I discovered the joy, economy and convenience of my own clippers.) The guy shaving my head knew who I was; for some reason he wanted to tell his colleague, a young woman working at the next chair along. I didn’t want him to, but couldn’t stop him.
“This bloke is a famous writer,” he said to her.
“Oh,” she said. And that was the limit of her curiosity.
“You probably don’t know the names of any famous writers, though, do you?” he said contemptuously.
“Not really,” she said.
“Not really? What does that mean? Name me one writer. Name me one writer in the history of the world.”