The Author As Celebrity

Today's post is the result of a couple of articles that had me reflecting on the celebrity of authors.

The first article, a book review in the New York Times, was about a new unauthorized biography of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM).

Self-disclosure first: TKAM is one of my all-time favorite books. I've probably read it from cover-to-cover at least a dozen times over the years. I even blogged about Harper Lee back on March 11th.

Harper Lee has long fascinated readers everywhere. She was only 34 when TKAM was published in 1960. After participating in promoting both the book and the subsequent Oscar-winning film released in 1962, Lee withdrew from public view and has rarely been seen or heard from since. Although forty-six years have elapsed since the release of TKAM, Lee has never published a second book. The Times quotes her explaining to a cousin, “When you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go.”

Instead of spending the past five decades teaching and lecturing, Lee has maintained a dignified silence. She divides her time between Monroeville, Alabama (where she was born) and New York where she keeps an apartment.

In contrast, the Arizona Republic had an article this morning that says, "bookstores ‘are all dealing with the rise of the author as a celebrity and we are all dealing with these events [booksignings] getting bigger and bigger.’”
The Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona has been looking for a larger space, which will permit them to host signings. The business has begun charging as much as $35 per person for admission to signings “because of the growing demand for a scrawled signature by an author who may have to sign up to 1,000 books in one sitting.”

Cindy Dach, the events director for Changing Hands, explained: “We have only charged about half a dozen times, but it is going to increase because more celebrities are writing books, and more authors are getting movies made out of their books.”

The notion of the author as celebrity is a bit alien to me. While not wrong, it doesn’t sound quite right.

Access to books has always seemed such a democratic thing. As a child, I can remember my mother loading my younger brother and I up in a red wagon once a week and carting us two miles to our local library. We would fill the wagon with books and then the three of us would walk all the way home again. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we always had books. To expect readers today to pay to see their favorite authors seems flat out wrong.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine not writing either.

Of course, Lee may be writing and not submitting for publication, but that just seems sad. To love the printed word as much as she must to have written such a magnificent novel and to be afraid to share your gifts is like a bird refusing to fly for fear of heights.

That must be the flip side of celebrity: To be so fearful of looking foolish that you don't dare make a wrong move--or any move.

The problem is, when we don't step forward for fear of falling backward, we can't make any progress. So what if you look silly for a moment or two? Someone else will be along soon to take your place. Think of how strange the Wright Brothers must have looked to their neighbors that day on Kitty Hawk. But if they hadn't been brave enough to do what they did, we might not be able to traverse the air today.

Then, again, maybe I’m just being fanciful.

Just musing . . .