I am thinking of three celebrities: The first, cousin to a global songwriting sensation, left his wife in a mental institution and shacked up with a Hollywood gossip columnist. The second had himself court-martialed, married a near-tween cousin and to this day inspires Goth culture. The third challenged his critics to street-fights, became a political radio "personality" and was eventually arrested for treason.
Hint: None of these men are Liam Gallagher.
But F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe and Ezra Pound were some of the first to incite the cult of celebrity; commanding popular culture and counterculture. Their antics and egos were larger than life, so why the disparity between celebrity and writing today, even for writers who are already celebrated?
Chime in something smug about our almost fetishist visual media that marginalizes wordsmith to the mystique of the reclusive. The fact is, cooks, mechanics and guys that go tanning are achieving icon status today, so where are the scribes?
I did some Muggle arithmetic and JK Rowling is only less commercial than ten writers in history, one of them Shakespeare. On a comparable star-meter she'd land right around Johnny Depp. Rowling was famous for creating the House of Gryffindor, but arguably only became a celebrity when Daniel Radcliffe and co. metamorphosed into franchise stars. (Rowling and her tankini are now regularly featured on holiday in the pages of Hello.)
Pre-existing celebrity seems equally non-transferable when it comes to writing. Take Black Flag, provocateurs of hardcore punk and arguably one of the most influential bands of recent subculture. Their dystopian ire and on-stage rage cycles spawned a feverish following. Yet when iron-jawed front man Henry Rollins started seething spoken word (even winning a Grammy for his work Get In The Van; On The Road With Black Flag) there was nary a chest bump. Even more implausible, reception of his prolific stand-alone prose was almost polite. Rollins is probably the only contemporary poet who can hold the attention of mosh pit at Coachella, so why is getting Black Flag fans to buy his chat books harder than getting them into synth-pop?
It's faintly unfair that when Steve Martin's novella Shopgirl made bestseller lists in 2000, critics still devoted ink asking "Can Steve Martin even write?" We regularly honor Martin for crafting complex characters, but our backs arch when he enterprises to do so in print.
It's also a compelling trend that cerebral creatives like Jamie Lee Curtis, Billy Crystal and John Lithgow are unleashing their imaginations within the children's book section. And why poets like "Pam Kennedy" are publishing instead of alter ego Ally Sheedy. When I ask a kid with a bag of Minor Threat records if he follows Henry Rollins' verse, he solidifies my theory, admitting the closest he's gotten is "His spoken stuff. I never bought his books. I was going to hear his voice anyway."
Weighing this, my mind turns to goop. As in Gwyneth Paltrow's much chattered about Goop.com. Devotees of Gwyneth now enjoy 24/7 connectivity to her via personal musings, travelogues and curated lists of ways to "Do," "Be" and "See" as she does. But her writing is a hit because it offers readers a dynamic proximity to what they already consider aspirational about Gwyneth-ness.
It seems while most media are busy amplifying association to a person of status, fictional literature remains, somewhat admirably, resistant. This phenomenon could be why 15-year-old Spencer Tweedy's blog is more referenced than Jeff Tweedy's poetry and why celebrity tell-alls remain as well stocked as Certs.
Perhaps it's not that celebrity evades lit luminaries or vice versa, but that our relationship with fiction is too intimate; our expectations too infused with our own experience and desires. Great writers, ego and all, know they must step aside; giving the words center stage. That then we will listen.