Fame
Thought experiments with my friend Alex into the lives of the rich OR the lives of the famous. Fame has been on my mind a lot since the passing of Anthony Bourdain.
Weekly Three
HEAR: Yesterday I saw Isaiah Rashad, a rising talent in the hip-hop world, at a meet-and-greet I chanced upon while riding my bike. I’ve been following Rashad since his start, so this was very cool. Here’s the track “Heavenly Father” from his first album, Cilvia Demo (2014).
READ: The essay “Can culture degenerate?” by Christy Wampole explores the idea that the arts are getting worse. We have choice, she says: to judge the world as embittered critics or marvel at the “infinite cultural improvisations that humans keep spinning out like silk.”
VIEW: I’m eager to get to the theatre to see the newly released documentary about Anthony Bourdain, ROADRUNNER: A film about Anthony Bourdain by Morgan Neville. Here’s the trailer.
No. 37: Fame
So what if it was one of the tallest hills in San Francisco? We stood on two boulders to get a little higher as we scanned the cityscape below.
“Would you rather be rich or famous?” Alex asked.
The urban sprawl of little Italy made a thousand colorful squares. Shrunken cars rolled down ribbons of road in slow motion. The metallic towers of the financial district, raised by corporate fanatics bent on the phallic shape, pierced the marine layer.
“Famous,” I said. Then I second guessed myself, “No. Yes. Famous.”
“I think I’d be rich,” Alex said.
Earlier we squinted at the penthouse of a nearby condominium, our necks bent back like stargazers. It had a three-sixty view of the bay, and we imagined a megarich CEO kept it exclusively for extramarital orgies featuring mountains of cocaine, prescription drugs, and two-ingredient cocktails.
“That’s some rockstar stuff,” I commented.
“That’s what I want,” Alex replied. “Don’t you?”
I admit, from below on our boulders, up there seemed glamorous and fun and free. But what were the chances it was all of those things? If this hypothetical CEO felt the need to secretly purchase the top floor of a luxury tower in San Francisco for the sole purpose getting laid and doing drugs, something was amiss.
“It seems like something you want, but do you?” I said. “The guy is cheating on his wife. He probably cries himself to sleep at night.”
I hoped it wasn’t true and that he was happy, but it seemed my default to question the compatibility of wealth and happiness. I worried for the rich, assuming them all exhibitionists — these have earned my concern — like our horny executive, without giving space to those modest millionaires. And how could I be critical after choosing fame as if it were the happier alternative? Might I do more for the world as an unknown billionaire than as a poor but famous hack? To choose to be rich instead of famous was to dismiss popularity, take your money, and drop out. Well played, Alex.
But fame meant readership, and readership influence, and influence power, and power leverage with which I might contribute something good to human consciousness.
This was bogus. Take, for example, two writers: Elias Canetti, an Austrian writer who worked in relative obscurity for most of his life until winning the Nobel prize in literature in 1981, and Anthony Bourdain, a chef and writer who skyrocketed to superfame in middle age.
Canetti worked quietly, deliberately, academically. He carried out his work virtually unknown. He turned ideas over and over, crafted books and articles and essays, met rejection and other hardship, but lived a full and happy life doing what he loved. His output was extraordinary not in volume but in its creative force. And late in life, he was recognized with one of the most prestigious prizes a writer can receive. Still, almost no one knew his name, and today the same is true.
At around the same time Canetti was receiving recognition for his brilliant work, Bourdain started his career as a figure even more inconsequential than an unknown. In terms of fame, he was a non-person — a writer and cook and eventually a chef — behind the scenes, slinging dishes from the depths of the kitchen and scribbling words into the pages of his notebook in the moments in between. Then he published an article in the New Yorker titled, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” which lead to a book deal, which lead to a TV spot, which lead to almost unfathomable worldwide fame. But Bourdain was unhappy. He ended his life in 2018, leaving in his wake a black void and a nation reeling from the loss of someone they considered a friend.
I realized from Alex’s question I shared the desire for fame with both Bourdain and Canetti. Of the three of us, one had achieved it — and that one had decided to stop existing.
What strikes me most about fame is its irrevocability. Once you’re famous, there’s no going back. You may become (in)famous, but the spotlight still shines even when the angles are unflattering. This certainty, especially for a writer-journalist like Bourdain, must have been agonizing — forever lost is the luxury of quietly observing the world. The famous person can’t stand detached and watch life flow by, for the flow of life stops to watch them. It’s impossible to enter a restaurant or coffee shop or store without all heads swinging in their direction like compass needles detecting a magnetic pull. To have the right of walking the Earth as a common man or woman revoked, always the personality and never the person, always a someone and never a random, an unknown, a citizen, is to reveal the nightmare disguised as a dream that is fame.
An unhappy paradox is that Anthony Bourdain, the personality, was exactly these: a random, an unknown, a citizen — a guy just like everyone else. In his TV shows his nonchalant, casual nature was indisputably genuine as he popped in and out of markets, chatted with restaurant proprietors, and even had a beer with President Obama. As a result, everyone felt they knew Bourdain, and to an extent, they did. One of his gifts to the world was thanklessly offering his whole self to his viewers and fans, as the title of one of his TV series, “No Reservations,” suggests. But while we, his fans, benefited from his generosity, he was plagued by it. According to stories, when fans saw Bourdain in the wild, they’d slap him on the shoulder like an old friend and offer to buy him a beer. He would turn down the gesture, but they would insist, and being courteous Bourdain would begrudgingly put a smile on his face accept. It must have been unbearably painful to feel there’s no person you truly know, while everyone in the world feels they know you. Fans were enriched by his presence without wondering if he was enriched by theirs. Who knew the real Anthony Bourdain? No one, he must have felt. Worse, no one took the time to find out because, why would they? It’s just good ol’ Bourdain.
Fame — it’s a tough act to follow. But to be rich is a great responsibility too. When we dream, we tend to follow the mantra: “Dream big.” But maybe mid-sized dreams are better. We might envision contentedness rather than a God-like lifestyle; to be well-known rather than famous; to be well-off rather than rich.
And yet through his fame, Bourdain made the world better. Through his shows and writings, he highlighted the fantastic diversity of the world’s culture while, at the same time, making plain how alike all of us are. It seems safe to say, though, that as he unintentionally achieved mass appeal, he didn’t see what was happening — the loss of self — until it was too late.
But maybe he did. Perhaps the cause of improving the lives of millions is worth the cost of self sacrifice. To follow this train of thought is to plummet ourselves into a dark rabbit hole. Only Bourdain, and any person facing the the realities of superfame, can answer such questions.
If fame comes for you, then, what to do? What matters is being aware of your growing prominence without forgetting the beauty and simplicity of the common life that made you. We are born unknown — it’s sublime to be given a life and to hold the world in our hands without any obligation to give back (thought it would be nice if we did) — but if we’ve earned fame through some trait that resonates with humanity, it seems a mistake to turn it down. So long as we know there’s a point of no return, why not go forth? When we come to that threshold, we can choose to pass, come what will, or turn back.
In the meantime, let us cherish being nothing more and nothing less than just another face in the crowd. ♦
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