Michael Schueth
Celebrity
Culture Secondary Critical Works:
Adams, Bluford. E
Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of US Popular Culture.
Minneapolis: U Minnesota P. 1997. Adams traces at least three major aspects of P.T.
Barnum’s public career. First, he looks
at the evolution of his character “Diddleum” into “P.T. Barnum, The Greatest
Showman.” Secondly, Adams sees Barnum’s continual move toward a middle class,
mid-brow audience as his ultimate genius, and he sees that suggested not only
in Barnum’s various business adventures, but also in his three major
autobiographical books. Barnum, Adams
argues, rewrote (or in Adam’s language “rescripted”) major portions of his life
to suit his business interests, such as when he became the manager of the
American Museum, and his autobiography moved to “endorse many of the
middle-class properties” that would help support his “new role as the owner of
a family-oriented amusement hall” (11).
Thirdly, Adams pays considerable attention to Barnum’s famous Jenny Lind
tour of 1852. In his analysis, Adams
argues that Lind’s celebrity was appropriated from Barnum, and that all the
media frenzy over the previously unknown singer boiled down to the question,
“Where’s Barnum?” I think that Adams’s
study is smart in the way he ties aspects of Barnum’s public personality and
business adventures to larger issues of race, class, gender, difference, amusement,
and celebrity.
Baker, Thomas Nelson. Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of
Literary Fame New York: Oxford UP. 1999.
This is an in-depth study of N.P. Willis, an important yet largely
forgotten figure in the 19th century. With the recent recovery work done on women
authors such as Harriet Jacobs and Fanny Fern (N.P. Willis’s sister), his
career has attracted attention. Baker
argues that Willis was “pivotal” to the “formative stages of what has been
called the modern culture of celebrity”
(4). Baker believes that Willis was one
of the first to use the word “celebrity” in American print, and that his first
“gossipy travel book,” Pencilling by the
Way, brought the “private experience to public account” (8). Willis was a man of many hats in the
nineteenth century—a poet, a writer, an editor, a man of fashion. He even “addressed a public eager for
instruction in the fine arts of aesthetic appreciation, social conduct, and
personal style” (97). One of Baker’s
most helpful discussions was his contention that celebrity culture requires
conflict—that one needs to be loved and
reviled to capture the public’s imagination.
This book will be helpful for my dissertation, and I plan on looking
more into some Willis’s books.
Belasco, Susan. “The Writing, Reception, and Reputation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Elizabeth
Ammons, ed., Approaches to Teaching
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. MLA, 2000. In her article, Belasco advocates
contextualizing discussions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in its historical
framework. Belasco suggests the value of
students understanding Stowe as a “celebrity and something of a media
personality by the late nineteenth century.”
Further, Belasco suggests situating the periodical culture of the
nineteenth century, especially since “the periodical also proved to be an
invaluable too for the antislavery movement” (23). To further make the history of the novel come
alive for students, Belasco helpfully suggests that teachers piece together
copies of the Era, the newspaper that
originally ran the novel. She says, “To
read Uncle Tom’s Cabin column by
column in issue after issue is a very different experience from reading the
novel in book form, in part because one is constantly reminded of the presence
of the many other voices, and speakers competing for attention on the pages of
the newspapers” (25). I pieced together
my own copies for a research paper during my MA program, and I found it an
incredible experience.
Bell, Michael Davitt. Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation: Selected Essays on American
Literature. Chicago: U Chicago P, 2001.
While Bell dedicates the first part of his book to Hawthorne, his second
part on literary vocation and women’s writing was the most interesting and
relevant to my project. Bell traces the
progression of the literary market in the US to Washington Iriving and James
Fenimore Cooper who “were the first Americans to find something like commercial
success” (69). What strikes me as
fascinating is how in the 1830s and early 1840s the literary market was
“primitive and disorganized,” but “By the 1850s things had changed
dramatically.” Equally fascinating are the numbers Bell cites, such as figures
for the overall book publishing trade in 1840 at $5.5 million, and by 1850 that
number more than doubled to $12.5 million.
Bell follows with close readings of both Cooper’s and Irving’s careers,
carefully noting how much each made in sales and negotiations with their
publishers. Ultimately, Bell argues that
both men were largely responsible for modeling what a successful career could
look like in American publishing. Bell
goes on to look closely at the rise of magazines and their generative effect on
the market for literary work. Bell’s
following chapter looks closely at women writers such as Stowe, E.D.E.N.
Southworth, and Fanny Fern. Much of the
information in this chapter seemed familiar, yet it is helpful to see these
women discussed as a group and thoughtfully explored for their contributions to
the literary marketplace.
Burns, Sarah.
Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1996. Burns looks at a variety of artists in the
last two decades of the nineteenth century to understand the “continually
contested” construction of the artist in American culture. Burns’ work is perfectly situated to my own
work in terms of the rise of celebrity culture and its resulting effects, even
though it is not specifically her focus.
Burns’ central investigation centers on how cultural constructions of
artists “were assembled, by whom, and for what purposes, and how the burgeoning
media played an increasingly dynamic role in representing the modern artist in
the public realm” (2). The role of
business and its growing relationship to the art world is an especially helpful
discussion, as Burns ties the pressures of aesthetics with the dangers of
commodifcation. Burns uses this
discussion to open up a larger discussion of the role of femininity and
masculinity in the art world. While male
artists were unable to be the same kind of robust men that business tycoons
were because artists were dependent on other rich men, Burns argues that male
artists (even while participating in cultural activities deemed feminine) were
never protected by by the “overarching discourse concerning the ‘natural’
superiority of male intellectual and creative powers,” while women artists seen
as “unnatural, unsexed, repellent, barren, and offensive” (169).
Burns’s chapter “Performing the Self”
was most directly related to celebrity culture, in which she argues that
artists had had to learn “how to perform” to fit into cultural expectations of
artists in “the realm of the spectacle” (222).
Burns focuses on Whistler, who she believes is “a highly suggestive
vehicle by which to explore the emergence, during the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, of the artist as entertainer, incorporated into the nascent culture
industry” (222). Because Whistler
constructed his image through “key markers” (an affected costume, mannerism,
and body language), Burns suggests that, “By being himself, Whistler was
selling himself” (231). Much as I will
argue with Cather, Whistler’s friends argued that his public personae was a
“decoy” that protected the private life of the artist. Burns sees Whistler as integral to our modern
and postmodern understandings of artists and personalities in our culture,
tying him specifically to Warhol.
Braudy, Leo. The
Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. NY: Vintage, 1986. This is the largest and most widely respected
study of fame and celebrity written.
Braudy charts the growth and change in fame with Alexander the Great and
works his way to the twentieth century.
Braudy’s study is expansive at about six hundred pages, and he seems
particularly interested in identifying how Western culture shifted from the
worship of the heroic figure to the worship of the famous man or woman. Braudy sees that our cultural understanding
of fame and our unyielding desire to be remembered is deeply rooted in Western
culture. He writes, “To be famous, goes
the myth, is to rest in solitude, but without aloneness: like Achilles in his
tent, sulking at Agamemnon’s affront to his heroic nature” (6). Fame and its 20th
century cousin, celebrity, Braudy argues, are fundamentally tied into notions
of history and remembering; fame is a tangible way to cheat death, to transcend
one’s own life by becoming a part of history itself.
Curnutt, Kirk.
“Inside and Outside: Gertrude Stein on Identity, Celebrity, and Authenticity.”
Journal of Modern Literature. 23:2 (Winter 1999/2000): 291-308. Curnutt’s essay argues that Gertrude
Stein’s sudden shift in the 1930s to shun her celebrity status was a successful
career move that was built on shifting cultural values of Hollywood stars and
the public’s increasing desire for celebrities who kept their private lives
private. He looks closely at Stein’s
lectures from the period, which details her beliefs about “inside/outside,” as
she termed the artist’s public and private life. Curnutt looks at other writers, most notably
Fitzgerald, who also used similar rhetoric in literary interviews. The most useful question Curnutt asks about
the nature of literary celebrity culture is how does “writing in an age of
celebrity” affect a writer’s “public performance.” He notes that Stein was a danger in a
writer’s public self because his/her audience would then consume his/her art
through the lens of that public self. In
this period, it seems, Stein had many of the same concerns that Cather had
about celebrity culture. However,
Stein’s public resistance of her fame may have been a way of achieving an even
greater fame. Curnutt tells the story of
Stein at a Hollywood party. When Charlie
Chaplin asks her how she gets as much press as she does, she tells him, “By
having a small audience.” I think this
essay will be beneficial as I think about how Cather separated her
private/public self.
Cowen, Tyler. What
Price Fame? Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Cowen looks at the changes in term
“fame” from the Greeks to our modern celebrity culture. He believes that modern fame was born out of
the heroic and the cultural ideals that positioned one as a “hero.” Today, he
argues, “The fame of celebrities creates a collective space in which fans share
their emotional and aesthetic aspirations” (6). He also argues that the
commercialism of celebrity drives the mass public into a collective
middle-class with shared values, and reinforces what seems to be a “natural”
break between “them” and “us” (66). In
line with Cather, I find Cowen’s interest in the public/private issue of
celebrity fascinating. He argues that,
“The quest for privacy therefore is partially self-frustrating. The more a star
seeks privacy, the greater the demand for information about his or her
reclusive and mysterious persona” (132). While he argues that “established stars
will take fewer risks” because they fear possible failure and “seek to hold
onto their dominant market positions” they “become less likely to produce
radical innovations” (140). I don’t think this fits with Cather, who radically
shifted her career with Death Comes for
the Archbishop. He also importantly
notes that “The Stoics, many Christian theologians, Petrarch, Dante, Milton,
and Arthur Schopenhauer all questioned whether fame should be treated as an
ordinary object of desire, rather than as a burden, addiction, or illusion”
(150). The way Cowen spins celebrity,
one can get a long historical understanding of how our cultural construction of
the hero has changed, and that in many ways the movie star has become our
modern hero.
Donoghue, Frank. The
Fame Machine: Book Reviewing and Eighteenth Century Literary Careers. Stanford:
Stanford UP, 1996. Donoghue dates modern publishing and book
culture to about 1750, when critics began to write on the value of books. Donoghue notes that before this, patrons paid
authors to produce whatever pleased them.
Writing, therefore, was not dictated by the public, but by the private
taste of the individual patron. The crux
of his argument is that, “In contrast to sociologists who have tended to see
careers as largely self-determined by the professionals who live them out, I
assert that a career is a narrative that cannot be authored entirely by its own
subject. Indeed, careers worked out
against a variety of powerful and often oppressive institutional constraints” (3-4).
I think his point is critical in that for Cather, it was not possible to
imagine a career without publicity, advertising, or photography. Those aspects of the literary market and
authorship were not negotiable for a writer who wanted to live from her
writing. He also spends a great deal of
time writing about women’s writing, and birth of the woman writer in English
history. This was a helpful and
fascinating book.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American
Culture. NY: Oxford UP, 1997. I
loved reading this book. Fishkin creates
a scholarly book that is both memoir and a deeply felt and well-argued and
researched look into race in America all through the lens of Mark Twain. As she discusses the kitschy tourist traps of
Twain’s hometown, she reflects on Missouri’s slave past, and inevitably, on our
very modern problems with racism in this country. Somewhat of a celebrity figure herself,
appearing on national television networks to argue for the value of Huck Finn,
Fishkin shows a side to academic life that I don’t think we see enough
of—someone whose life’s work is studying and understanding that which she is
passionate about. I hope this book leads
to more creative and insightful academic memoirs.
Gerber, Philip. “Jolly Mrs. Yerkes is Home From
Abroad: Dreiser and the Celebrity Culture.” Theodore
Dreiser and American Culture: New Readings.
Ed. by Yoshinobu Hakutani. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2000. In this essay, Philip Gerber traces the story
of Charles T. Yerkes, Jr., the prototype for Dreiser’s novel The Financier. I read this novel for my last exam, and while
I enjoyed it a great deal, I was surprised to know that it was a
bestseller. Gerber’s insightful and
detailed account of Yerkes, a well-known financier and would-be public
do-gooder in New York and Chicago, serves to contextualize how scandalous his
rise and eventual fall from power was to all Americans. The story reads much like a soap-opera, and
Dreiser’s treatment of the case is in large measure kind in comparison to what
really transpired between Yerkes, his first wife, and his mistress. Gerber
traces notes Dreiser made throughout his journalistic career to prove that
Dreiser had in mind a novel based Yerkes for decades. That Yerkes was a celebrity figure in
newspapers served to add controversy to Dreiser’s novel, fueling public
curiosity over Dreiser’s fictional treatment of the Yerkes scandal. Gerber’s
account of the Yerkes’s scandal makes me want to reread The Financier in light of the celebrity culture Dreiser based his
novel from.
Giles, David. Illusions
of Immortality: A Psychology of Fame and Celebrity. NY: St. Martin’s P,
2000. Giles defines celebrity as a media construction that is largely a
twentieth century phenomenon, a point I have a problem accepting (3-4). He
argues that there is a difference between the “celebrity” and the “famous
person.” The latter being deserving of his/her fame. Yet, he argues, the two
terms are often interchangeable: “The brutal reality of the modern age is that
all famous people are treated like celebrities by the mass media, whether they
be a great political figure, a worthy campaigner, an artist ‘touched by
genius,” a serial killer, or Maureen of Driving School.” (5). He sees the birth of celebrity culture
founded in Rome: “Suddenly words like fama
and celebritas were part of the
vocabulary, and the recognition of civic honours was possible, even for someone
who was not born into leadership (although the possibility of fame was still
restricted to the upper classes)” (15). Fascinatingly he argues that celebrity
and fame have historically served as “a way of defying death, and that the
basic human desire for immortality can be realized in a symbolic sense” (44).
One of the most alienating aspects of the star system is the potential loss of
control, a major source of distress for celebrities: “Trying to maintain a
consistent sense of ‘true self’ is made particularly difficult in the initial
stages of fame, when the celebrity finds herself caught up in a dizzying whirl
of social interaction” (88).
Johanningsmeier, Charles. Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: the Role of Newspaper
Syndicates, 1860-1900. NY: Cambridge UP, 1997. An important study, since, as Johanningsmeier
argues, “newspaper syndicates can no longer be overlooked by literary
scholars.” Johanningsmeir looks at the rise of the newspaper syndicates and the
business and cultural forces that made them possible. He most notably looks at S.S. McClure’s
Associated Literary Press in great detail.
I was fascinated by the business aspects of the newspaper syndicates,
since I don’t think many scholars understand just how much literary work was
published in newspapers. I enjoyed
Johanningsmeier’s look at what the syndicate system meant to authors, who often
had to construct their work to fit the requirements of the newspaper rather
than their own artistic visions.
Surprisingly, well known names like Henry James, Mary E. Wilkins,
William Dean Howells and many others all participated in this system and valued
the syndicates for steady income.
Johanningsmeier also looks at the relationships between the syndicates
and local newspapers, and well as the public’s response to syndicated fiction. This is a helpful study that provides a needed
context for the nineteenth century literary market.
Kitch, Carolyn.
The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American
Mass Media. Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 2001. This study looks at magazine covers from the
1890s to the 1930s and studies the changing visual representations of
women. “Viewed over time,” Kitch argues,
the development New Woman’s image in American periodicals “offers a study in
iconography” (8). What is helpful here
for anyone studying Cather is that Kitch uses the Ladies Home Journal for much of her analysis, as well as McClure’s (however, the dates of the Ladies’ Home Journal match more closely
with Cather’s involvement than McClure’s).
Kitch argues that it isn’t fashion or a particular “look” that has historically
and most powerfully defined American womanhood, “but rather with her location
and context”(19). Therefore Kitch reads
the visual landscape of various illustrations and notes how over time women
move from typical feminine indoor spaces to public spaces, where she is less
confined and/or metaphorically connected to historically male dominated spaces
such as the outdoors or the business office. Kitch argues that illustrations in
magazines held a powerful ideological space for middle-class Americans, and she
believes that changing visual representations of womanhood had a powerful
effect on the those women who consumed these magazines. As these images became more standard, and as
magazines found success in various “looks,” advertising began using such images
to sell products. Kitch spends a
considerable amount of time treating the Gibson Girl, first published in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1903. She connects the image and its power to race
anxiety in the US, specifically showing a connection fears of Eastern European
immigrants. Further, Kitch suggests that
the Gibson Girl and the other “girls” who emerged in this era became class
markers for poor and working-class women to model themselves after.
Maland, Charles J.
Chaplin and American Culture: The Evolution of a Star Image. Princeton UP, 1989. Maland looks at the rise and fall of
Chaplin’s career within the context of American culture. Chaplin spent almost 40 years in the US, and
Maland follows his career as he grew from small notices in movie magazines to
one of the biggest a most highly paid stars of his time. Maland, however, is more interested in
exploring Chaplin’s fall from grace, as he embraced a growing political edge to
his films in the 1930s. Modern Times and The Great Dictator are discussed in detail, and his eventual
problems with the US government over Chaplin’s communist beliefs. What strikes me in reading this book is what
a potential mine field one’s celebrity can become when one actively engages in
politics. While Chaplin’s leftist
politics were in fashion in the 1930s, he was vilified in the 1940s and 50s for
the same beliefs.
Rodden,
John. Performing the Literary Interview:
How Writers Craft Their Public Selves. Lincoln: U Nebraska P, 2001. While situated in the literary culture of the
late twentieth century, Rodden’s main argument that the literary interview is
not a reliable “real” event but rather a public performance is extremely
helpful in my work. From his own
experience as an interviewer, Rodden explains that it “is not just a
relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee,” but rather a complex
relationship that “involves other persons whose contributions are significant”
(ix). Rodden argues that the interview is
a place where authors develop “the rhetorical craft of self-fashioning”
(1). As I was reading this, I felt as
though Rodden could have situated himself in the nineteenth century, rather
than at the mid-20th century.
To my mind, Whitman, Twain, and Cather, (and I assume many others),
strongly developed what the literary interview would look like later in the
twentieth century. Instead, Rodden looks
to the Hollywood interview and the strong tradition (and its value by the
Academy) of the literary interview.
While these are critical to the development, I think there is much more
at work than these two traditions. To be
fair, Rodden introduces this study as a “stimulus” to the study of the literary
interview in American literature, and after reading his work, I hope that
others find the critical value in re-examining nineteenth century and early
twentieth century writers for their contributions to this literary genre.
Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte:
Opening the American Literary West. U Oklahoma P,
2000. Scharnhorst’s biography of Bret Harte is the
first in nearly a century, and makes for a compelling case, I think, for
scholars to look further into his career and legacy. While Shcharnhorst follows Harte’s biography,
he also is concerned with Harte’s role in the literary marketplace and the development
(and downfall) of his celebrity status.
For a brief time, Harte was one of the highest paid and best-known
American authors in the US, and his rapid rise to fame was followed by a
painful downfall. Scharnhorst’s study is
carefully crafted, and will be a well-used resource for my dissertation.
Warren, Joyce. Fanny
Fern: An Independent Woman. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992. The biography of one of the best-selling
authors of the 19th century, Warren’s work has once again brought
the author to public attention. I was
most interested in Warren’s chapter, “Famous and Infamous,” where she describes
how Fern’s fame caused “her much pain and annoyance in her personal life.” As a writer who “flouted convention,” she was
widely seen among conservatives as “improper and unfeminine” (179). Fern’s campaign for men’s dress for women,
her stories, and her success all made her a target for various interests,
including her own family. What her story
tells us is that women’s place in celebrity culture is by definition a
political and contested place—especially if those celebrity women do not meet
culturally sanctioned guidelines of proper behavior. Madonna, for instance, is in a much similar
place today. Her recent launch of her
children’s book, The English Rose,
was controversial because only weeks before she had engaged in a very sexual
performance on MTV.
Primary Works
Barnum, PT.
Barnum’s Own Story: The Autobiography of P.T. Barnum. NY: Dover, 1961. This was the most entertaining and strange
book on my list. Barnum writes his life
story like a Horatio Alger story, but instead of getting ahead and staying
ahead, Barnum loses his fortune a few times.
Most his business schemes are, in fact, concerned with recapturing his
wealth. Through some of the most bizarre
schemes imaginable, most notably Joice Heth, a former slave who he toured as
George Washington’s 160 year-old nurse, Barnum certainly takes credit for
creating spectacle and celebrity in the US.
Published in 1855, Barnum’s first Autobiography
(there were three) makes for a fascinating read aside Leaves of Grass, which also came out that year.
Cather, Willa. The
Song of the Lark (1915 Edition).
Lincoln: Bison Books, 1978. This
novel has been called her most autobiographical. Cather follows the rise of Thea Kronberg from
small town girl to struggling pianist to opera singer. The novel marks one of the key places Cather
works out her attitudes toward the role of the artist in an age of celebrity
culture. I want to explore this novel
carefully in my dissertation.
---. Obscure Destinies. NY:
Knopf, 1932. A collection of three short
stories:“Neighbor Rosicky, “Old Mrs. Harris”, and “Two Friends.” What strikes me about the book is that the
title “obscure” opposes celebrity, and in looking into what is “obscure” in
each of these stories means, it strikes me how personal these three stories
are. In “Neighbor Rosicky,” it seems
that his pioneering cross-cultural generation is becoming obscured by
materialism, especially to his son’s who are blind to their father’s own
obscure life as a poor tailor in London.
In “Old Mrs. Harris,” three generations of women become increasingly
obscure to one another in a small, cramped house. And in “Neighbor Rosicky,” two friends loose
sight of the value of their friendship in a clash over politics.
Fern, Fanny. Ruth
Hall & Other Writings. Ed.
Joyce W. Warren. New Brunswich, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1986. The once forgotten novel
by one of the most famous women writers of the nineteenth century centers on
her thinly veiled account of her own rise to fame as a writer. Fern’s conscious use of the sentimental story
is key to the power of her story, as she overrides convention for the sake of
survival. Ruth’s venture into writing as
“Floy” certainly models Parton’s own career with “Fanny Fern,” and her rise to
celebrity suggests much about the era in general and book publishing in
particular. That Fern had to begin her
novel with a apologetic note that, “I do not dignify it by the name of “A
novel,” suggests the political minefield that Parton had to weave her way
through in the 1850s as a powerful and successful woman writer. Fern is always underscoring Ruth’s motherhood
and couches her career and public life in terms of her children’s future. Even
at the end of the novel, when Ruth has made a considerable fortune, Ruth’s
daughter tells Mr. Walter, “We are proud of her…if she is not proud of
herself. Don’t you think it is too bad,
Mr. Walter, that mamma won’t let Katy and me tell that ‘Floy’ is our mother?”
(209). It seems as though even while a
woman can attain a great deal of fame under an assumed name, it was too
dangerous for the writer to stand before her public as a political woman.
Franklin, Benjamin.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. NY: Bantam, 1982. Franklin’s Autobiography was written with the express intent to educate young
men on life, business, and individualism.
Franklin spends considerable time discussing various diets he tried,
acquaintances who helped him, and especially his business ventures. In reading this account of his life, I can
see where the Horatio Alger “rags to riches” myth was born. Certainly Franklin’s own fashioning of his
life mapped that American myth.
Harte, Bret. “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” The
Luck of Roaring Camp and Other
Tales. Boston:
Riverside P, 1904. A short story about a rough California mining town that is
turned upside down when the town’s only woman resident, a Native American
prostitute, dies giving birth to her son.
Fittingly, the camp of men take group responsibility for the baby, who
they name Thomas Luck. The rough men transform themselves into better people as
they find themselves surprisingly energized by their group fatherhood. In the
final scene, the town is flash flooded and the town’s roughest character dies
attempting to save “The Luck,” who is already dead. What strikes me about this story is the whole
notion of the West’s power (especially California’s power) to become a place
where men could show “no indication of their past lives and character.” In Ruth Hall, a neighbor’s husband deserts
her for California, and I think I’ve seen this phenomenon appear in other books
as well. Certainly in Huck Finn, the West is a place where
identity can be continually shaped and reshaped. Opposing celebrity, the West was a place
where men could escape their identities—or perhaps reach celebrity by cutting
ties with their former identities.
Hollywood certainly plays into this in the twentieth century with its
invention of stars like Marilyn Monroe, etc.
Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. NY: Othello, 1958.
According to James Woodress’s biography, “The only recorded instance in
which she ever sat down socially with a black was once at the Menuhins’
apartment when she was invited to meet Paul Robeson” (488). She later met him again on stage at the
National Institute for Arts and Letters award ceremony in 1944. Robeson’s memoir looks at his career as an
actor, writer and political activist. Robeson
writes compellingly of his struggles as an individual and his realization that
he “had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional
stereotyped portrayals of Negroes on stage and screen” (39). Robeson was an active member of the Communist
Party and he describes, painfully, how he was persecuted by McCarthy.
Frighteningly mirroring current events, Robeson’s memoir is a powerful text
that needs to be read by students. His
book is strongly tied to the slave narrative and his beliefs also are strongly
tied to black intellectuals such as Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Harriet
Jacobs.
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) Stein’s Autobiography
takes readers inside the bohemian life of two ex-patriots living in the
budding modernist movement in France and Spain.
A virtual tour of celebrities of the day, Stein and Toklas played key
roles in formulating a salon-like atmosphere.
Twain, Mark. The
Autobiography of Mark Twain. (1871) A long and sometimes rambling work,
Twain’s Autobiography seems to have
been constructed as a lasting statement to his culture that if they wanted to
know about his life, he would tell every last boring detail. Twain himself provides clues throughout the Autobiography that he is only half
serious about the work’s tedious contents.
I haven’t done any research on this, but it’s my estimation that Twain
was reacting against the widespread popularity of the autobiography genre.
---. “The Touchstone.” This novella
opens with the main character, Glennard, finding a notice in a magazine asking
for letters and other information concerning a famous writer, Mrs. Aubyn. Glennard, it turns out, was a former lover
interest with the author, who recently died.
Unable to marry the young woman Glennard has been dating for the last
two years because he is not rich, Glennard secretly sells the love letters to a
publisher and quickly makes a good turn in business and marries. The book is a hit, and creates a public
frenzy about the nature of the letters.
At one social gathering, Glennard overhears an argument in which some believe
that it was wrong to publish the intimate love letters while others argue that
“A personality as big as Margaret Aubyn’s belongs to the world. Such a mind is
part of the general fund of through.
It’s the penalty of greatness—one becomes a monument historique.
Posterity pays the cost of keeping one up, but on condition that one is always
open to the public.” Glennard, a weak man, begins to crumble under the weight
of his conscious, and eventually tells his wife and endures a weakened
marriage. What is ironic about the story is that Wharton’s own love letters
were printed in a similar fashion in the 1980s.
Clearly Wharton was aware of the dangers of celebrity culture, and she
was also a victim to it just as her character was after her death.
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