Anonymous fame

Any fame that you can achieve as an author isn't what most people regard as real fame, or even fake fame. It's not just that nobody recognizes you; most people have never heard of you, either. It's that anonymous sort of fame.

Nick Hornby, Believer April, 2005

One striking thing about the recent three-night series about Ernest Hemingway on PBS was how famous Hemingway was. He was a best-selling writer, yet even people who had never read any of his books knew his name and recognized him on sight. He was pictured regularly in newspapers and on magazine covers. His death became front-page news. It was something people talked about it. Other writers of his generation were almost as well-known. These included John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Laura Lippman

Today Stephen King might be the only American writer average people would recognize on the street. James Patterson, because he's been on television promoting his books, could be another. Even readers who recognize the names of their favorite authors might not recognize these same authors on the street or in a restaurant. In part this is because authors age, while the photos on the back covers of their books rarely do.  Laura Lippman remains an attractive woman, but is hardly the pretty young lass pictured on her books until a few years ago. (I recall that I only reluctantly agreed to update the photo that had appeared on my newspaper column for about two decades.)

The lack of name recognition seems the bigger problem for today's writers, most of whom probably don't mind not being recognized in public. But they might prefer that more people would recognize their names. Familiar names often get placed above the title and help sell more books. Most readers don't even care what authors look like.

Novelist Nick Hornby's rant in the April 2005 edition of Believer magazine was not so much about his name and face not being recognized as about the fact that so many people today are unable to name even one writer, and this includes Hemingway and Shakespeare. One might think anyone who ever attended high school could remember the name of at least one writer discussed in English class, but apparently that is not the case. Hornby writes, "The 18-34 age group, incidentally, used to be the one most likely to read a novel; it has now become the least likely."

Hornby, author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down and other best-selling novels, transitions from this subject into another that might not at first seem to even be related — that so many authors today are writing novels about characters who are themselves novelists. He cites Anita Brookner, David Hodge, Colm Toibin, Alan Hollinghurst and Ian McEwan as novelists who have done this as of 2005. In the years since the trend has continued, I have noticed. Another, related trend features novels about bookstores and libraries. Many of these are terrific books. I love many of them. Yet Hornby is right. Such novels may appeal to those of us who already love books, novelists, bookstores and libraries, but they hardly appeal to casual readers or non-readers.

One thing you can say about Nick Hornby's novels is that they are not about authors and books but rather about ordinary people who themselves may rarely, if ever, read a book, let alone write one. People may still not recognize Hornby on the street, but if they are ever going to try reading a novel, they will be more likely to try one by him than one by Hollinghurst or McEwan.