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Proud Humility and the Best-of-Breed Syndrome
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11861 |
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BOOK WORLD
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8 / 1987 |
4,385 Words |
| Author
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Henry A. Myers
Henry A. Myers teaches political theory and the history of
ideas at James Madison University. He is the author of
Medieval Kingship (Nelson-Hall, 1982) and one of the
editors of The Global Experience: Readings in World
Civilization (2 vols., Prentice-Hall, 1987). |
THE FRENZY OF RENOWN
Fame and Its History
Leo Braudy
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986
600 pp., $27.50
Probably any of us with an interest in the past has been struck by the way people avidly and openly pursued fame in former ages and pursue it perhaps even more avidly - but certainly less openly - in our own time. We all know that public relations men are hard at work giving public, or would-be public, figures enough of an image to make them memorable. Looking back at history, it appears that the desire to be famous is as old as civilization, when pharaohs memorialized themselves with pyramids and the heroes of the Iliad shouted their name at the enemies they were fighting in order to get credit for their deeds. Credit for achievement makes a person feel important. Since feeling important is a common variety of feeling good, at least among more energetic people, pursuit of such credit can be admitted as a fairly natural urge.
Sometimes the connection between fame and success is clear. Fame for the right reason can make politicians more electable and give performers more box office appeal. We find fame emerging as a goal rather than a means, however, when people reveal themselves to inquiring reporters in ways that will indeed make them better known but not particularly electable or marketable. In fact, interviewees regularly give interesting material destructive to their own careers to the media. The suicidal element of fame-seeking is, of course, not new: We recall that Homer's Odysseus insisted, as he was sailing away, on
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