On Celebrity and Self-Promotion
"Wanting to be famous is surely the most ubiquitous ambition of our age. So why do people look at me when I say it as if I’ve just confessed to being a Nazi sympathiser? There’s something cheap and tawdry about wanting to be a celebrity, as though no one setting out to achieve something so vulgar could possibly produce anything worthwhile. Such snobbery is based on a ludicrously high-minded notion of what inspires people to greatness. According to Freud, all artists are motivated by the desire for ‘honour, power, riches, fame and the love of women’. Even Arthur Miller, the patron saint of liberals, confessed to finding his notoriety a bit of a thrill. ‘Something in me groaned at their approach,’ he wrote of being recognised by members of the public, ‘even if, against my will, I couldn’t deny the animal fun of being noticed.’
Whenever I make this point at dinner parties, the standard response is to accuse me of mixing up fame and celebrity, as if the two are completely unrelated. Thus, it is all very well for Martin Amis to announce that he wants to write books that will still be read in 100 years’ time, but God forbid he should set out to write a bestseller. In other words, everlasting fame is good, but the short-lived variety — the kind that lasts 15 minutes — is bad.
But why should one be so admirable, and the other so contemptible? Why should duration make such a difference? Surely, if the yearning to be noticed is sad and pathetic, then the desire to be noticed by successive generations to come, stretching to the end of time, is even more sad and pathetic? If we’re being logical about this, we should rank Martin Amis even lower on the respectability scale than Jade Goody. She only wants to be famous in her lifetime. He wants to be famous for ever."
"If we’re going to have an Individual Revolution — ie, if we accept that we can be successful without the help of powerful companies — how are we going to find out about each other?
The answer is self-promotion. Who can explain what makes me great with more enthusiasm and authenticity than myself? If I’m not paying my label to plaster my face on a billboard, can I be blamed for speaking boastfully on my little website? Is it so narcissistic to post the best photos of myself when I have the largest private collection of them in existence?
Many of us are afraid to talk about our achievements, even when neglecting to do so is dishonest. If you are special; i.e. if you have personally done something great, by all means, bring it to my attention. You can rather safely assume that if you don’t, nobody will. And if they do, you won’t feel they did it justice. I’ve gotten quite a bit of press and never felt like it conveyed me properly."
— Filed under Miscellany