Writing As the Culture of Celebrity

I first attended the Cape Town Book Fair at the Convention Centre last year (2007). It gave me a sinking feeling that writers were fast becoming what Susan Sontag called “an aspect of the culture of celebrity”. Artists entering the celebrity cult? Of course artists too are people (people who happen to remember and record in a wonderfully transmuted way what make for our life experiences). They make art by depicting the nuances of our lived experiences, something that is rare and cannot be contrived. But why they should be compelled to behave like jobbing preachers is something worrying.

This year I found most people commenting what a good thing the direction of South African writing has taken, with writers ‘telling personal stories more’ as compared to political novels. At first I concurred, but when I read what this entailed in our recent literature I got concerned a little again. When I discovered subjectivism was being made the pinnacle of personal narrative I recalled something Hans Jonas Paton said in criticising existentialist philosophy. “We should be particularly on our guard when the guide makes no pretence at objective thinking, which stands or falls by the argument independently of the personality of the thinker, but rests his case on the inwardness of his own personal experience. . .”

The complaint here is that of making an individual the measure of all things.

Celebrity is a contrived thing, which is why I’m surprised by this trend of artists entering the glamour culture. It can only mean one or two things; that our art is getting contrived—meaning it’s no longer art—or commodified. The commodification of art is a sad but necessary thing in an imperfect world (artists have to make a living too). But there’s difference between commodifying and commercialising art.

A commercial artist is like a performing seal that must do tricks to satisfy the feeding hand. Have artists been turned (turning themselves) into performers? Some do it because they are searching, not only for commercial gain, but mana—power and prestige. I do not suppose there ever was time when artists were indifferent to ambition and fame, but, unlike our times, they always regarded art first and foremost as a calling, or at least pretended to be disdainful of the hype.

I’m not trying to be pious about distant glories, but the truth of the matter is that hype is usually accompanied by poor writing standards. When I mentioned this to a colleague he accused me of being finicky. He was glad writers were getting what he termed ‘the seriousness they deserve.’

Writing as a celebrity cult is different from the ideal of writers being taken seriously. As much as it is always wonderful to meet good writers it is a rare thing to meet them among the celebrity lot, who are mostly celebrated for one thing or the other, but not necessary good writing. Celebrity authors are treated in these Book Fairs like pop stars, and sadly, they turn to behave like some. Book Fairs are now fast becoming parties where writers are solely judged by how much personality fun they dish to visitors. I’m flabbergasted by the flamboyant superficiality of it all.

Writers are not public utility. Their work might be but not their persons.

In her essay on translation, The World as India, Susan Sontag noted. “A writer is first of all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short. It is from reading, even before writing, that I became part of a community—the community of literature—which includes more dead than living writers.”

As writer-reader I’m daily finding that good books are becoming rarer by the day the more the quantity of publication increases. It is still possible to find nuggets of gold among the rabble, but gone are the days when writers percolated what they wanted to say, and the style by which they say it. Books now compete with other stuff of our instant culture. As the result one rarely finds a book that is elegantly written, charming, candid, mordant, and so on. In instead you find yourself glad at the end for having managed to finish a book; rejoicing with Dr. Johnson that it was not longer than it actually was.

It is said of Edmund Wilson that, as his reputation grew, he printed up a postcard that he sent to those who requested his services. On it he checked the appropriate box: Edmund Wilson does not write articles or books on order; he does not write forewords or introductions, does not give interviews or appear on television, and does not participate in symposia. Perhaps it is time contemporary writers rediscover the wisdom in this so as to get back to serious stuff of writing books, good books.

As for subjectivism in literature, it has contributed a lot in the protection and enhancement of our common humanity. The psychological brooding yielded many fresh and penetrating insights, and gave us more understanding of individual pathos; but it mastered the Hegelian concept of synthesis between the self and the external world to an extent of cloying hallucinatory tinge.

The problem with individual centred starting-point in literature and philosophy is that it tends to show less appreciation for other things, like history. It tends to run riot with morbid forms of subjectivism and individualism; looking only at the personal side of life with unduly anthropomorphic understanding of reality. When a man is isolated as a centre of interests he tends to see himself, and those who share his point of view, as the highest and authentic forms of existence. That’s dangerous narcissism.

Unhealthy intensity of subjectivism promotes anti-socialism, elitism, and escape from necessary collision with history. Every country, every nation, needs means to collide with its past. Escapism promoted by subjectivism avoids this to the detriment of discursive art. Present day German art is good example of a nation trying to grapple with it’s demons through what they call Bildung; that is an engagement of history through art, philosophy and learning in general. Perhaps the South African ideal for literature too should be of that lot, especially since we too have many skeletons on our closet.