FAME!
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Am I famous? Not at all. I am very well-known in some very small circles, but famous? Nope.
This is one of those topics that arise as you get older — have I done everything I was capable of doing? Is it possible that I am as good as those people whose books fly off the shelves or whose music is inescapable on Bandcamp? Should I have been famous?
I guess I could be famous. My interviews on television or radio make for good viewing. My presentations change lives. I have a degree in theatre. I know how to present and perform. I could convince the public to adore me, I’m pretty sure. I mean, my hair is pretty good-looking at almost any length.
But ugh.
It’s too much work, isn’t it? It’s a constant job, the pressure to put yourself out there, to brand yourself, to stay relevant. I can’t even be hacked to post regularly on Bluesky about my work, much less struggle every day and every week to get into book fairs and panels and book signings. It goes without saying that I do not have what it takes to crank the machinery of fame.
I don’t think I ever did. One of my most vivid memories of my high school years is the fall after I attended the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program (as a visual arts major, theatre minor, 1970): My homeroom teacher was Mrs. Marjorie Hatchett, who was the sponsor of the drama club.
Mrs. Hatchett had some street cred, in that her sister was Hetty Jane Dunaway, the co-owner of Dunaway Gardens, which was the winter home of Sewell Productions, a theatrical company of the 1920s and 30s that sent performing troupes to small towns everywhere to do splashy revue shows involving the locals. (Minnie Pearl was their most famous alum.)
It was Mrs. Hatchett’s last year teaching, and I was in awe of how the entire community held her in such respect. One morning in homeroom I made a conscious decision that if, at the end of my life, I had managed to earn that kind of respect, then my life would have been well spent.
And that, I think, is how my life has gone.
Oh, you wanted a moral to this story? Okay fine: Fame is just a sideshow, a side effect of AUDIENCE, and it is best to remember that the New York Times Bestseller List is not your AUDIENCE. Do your work. Make the Thing That Is Not. Be happy.
