Considering Fame
Recently, as I was walking into a restaurant with my eight-year-old grandson he looked up at me and asked, “Nonny, do you think anyone in here will know you are Marion Dane Bauer?” (This is the grandchild who was once convinced I was the author of all his books.)
I laughed—how could I not?—and said, “Chessie, I’m sure they won’t.”
But I couldn’t explain to him what a blessing that is.
My successes have all been of a manageable size. I’ve published steadily for nearly forty years, producing an occasional book that sells very well indeed. But the books of mine I love best tend to come out to nice reviews and then slip quietly out of sight. A Newbery Honor, not a Newbery. A solid reputation, but not a name that everyone in the field knows, let alone folks in the larger world.
All of which has added up to my being able, despite the public nature of books, to live my life almost entirely out of the public eye.
I can understand folks’ longing for fortune, but fame? It has always looked like a curse to me. When others respond to me as “the author” as occasionally happens, my first impulse is to laugh. If they respond to one of my books—a whole different thing—I am delighted.
Someone once suggested that it must be gratifying to know I’m leaving all those books “for posterity.” But I have no illusions about how long books stay in print or in the consciousness of their readers. Unless I die rather sooner than I have planned, it’s unlikely my published work will outlive me by much. Already I see much of my early work slipping away into a deserved oblivion. It isn’t that it wasn’t good enough for its time. It was. But times change and new times demand new books . . . and new writers.
What is the reward then of this curious act of sending my words out to an audience of strangers? Beyond, of course, the fact that it enables me to make a living plying one of my few skills?
It lies simply in the act of writing itself, in the pleasure I get from doing it and the satisfaction I’m filled with when I discover that my words have touched some individual reader out there.
As for being known in the world, let me tell you another grandchild story. A while back, I was taking my then almost sixteen-year-old grandson clothes shopping, and I suggested that, since he would soon have a driver’s license, he might prefer in the future to be given a check rather than having his nonny trail after him through the stores. He was indignant. This towering boy-man said, “But this is our time together! And besides, I’m proud to tell my friends that my nonny buys my clothes and that she writes books to do it!”
What other kind of “fame” could possibly matter?