Boswell’s elaborate self-examination makes him a prime modern case of those who believe that fame and recognition will satisfy their desires to be complete, “uniform,” and filled with character, only to discover that nothing is really sufficient to satisfy the hunger within.
You have probably never heard of Professor Leo Braudy. He is the unknown author of the forgotten tome The Frenzy of Renown: Fame & Its History. No surprise.
Turns out fame can be hard to handle and maybe not worth pursuing.
But as with any grand climb, nobody knows what awaits at the top.
Or if it is all pink puppies and powdery poppies when you get there.
Sometimes it is doom.
Here’s a word from the publisher.
For Alexander the Great, fame meant accomplishing what no mortal had ever accomplished before. For Julius Caesar, personal glory was indistinguishable from that of Rome. The early Christians devalued public recognition, believing that the only true audience was God. And Marilyn Monroe owed much of her fame to the fragility that led to self-destruction. These are only some of the dozens of figures that populate Leo Braudy’s panoramic history of fame, a book that tells us as much about vast cultural changes as it does about the men and women who at different times captured their societies’ regard.
Spanning thousands of years and fields ranging from politics to literature and mass media, The Frenzy of Renown explores the unfolding relationship between the famous and their audiences, between fame and the representations that make it possible. Hailed as a landmark at its original publication and now reissued with a new Afterword covering the last tumultuous decade, here is a major work that provides our celebrity-obsessed, post-historical society with a usable past.
“The advent of the idea of a meritocracy, which began especially after the American and French revolutions, meant that anyone could aspire to anything. The process of democratization only accelerated in the 19th and 20th centuries, so that, when I was growing up, it was common to see TV people hovering over a newborn and exclaiming, “Just think, he could be president someday.” – Alain de Botton