Blogging L.A. has done a good job of late, bringing on new writers to support the small handful of local bloggers worth reading there: Will Campbell, David Markland, Jason Burns, Lucinda Michelle, Emily Banneker, Frazgo. The new names include Matt Mason, the 8 Track Kid, and Mike Winder.
A few annoying and uninformed bloggers are still taking up space at Sean Bonner’s creation, however, including Annika Barranti. From Barranti’s one line bio:
I live between Hollywood and Downtown. I’m a writer. I’m a mom. I like to knit.
Well, apparently Barranti can neither write nor knit her way out of this one: Yesterday, in a posting titled Mid Week Round-up: Brushes with Celebrity, Ms. Barranti opines:
Even celebrities (in as much as writers are celebrities) sometimes get starstruck.
You don’t think I could let that pass without comment, do you? I replied:
in as much as writers are celebrities
Are you freakin’ kidding me? Or perhaps you’ve never heard of certain writers who became celebrities in their time:
1. Jack London
2. Ernest Hemingway
3. George Plimpton
4. Truman Capote (the man who virtually invented the writer-as-celebrity schtick)
5. Norman Mailler (Ditto)
6. Jack Kerouac
7. Jerzy Kosinski
8. Joan Didion
9. Charles Bukowski
10.Hunter S. Thompsonin as much as writers can be celebrities?
I think I’ll let the list rest at 10
Barranti, refusing to relent to facts, responds:
No, I am not kidding. Very few writers are celebrities. Some of them are famous, but most are not celebrities. I absolutely agree with Truman Capote and Hunter Thompson from your list, and I definitely think Diablo Cody is a celebrity, but most writers are not, and very few of them achieve much fame.
What? She’s taking Hunter and Capote, throwing out the rest, and handing me back Diablo Cody? Diablo Cody? The former stripper-turned-screenwriter who regurgitated the Oscar-winning screenplay for Juno? I’ve got nothing against Cody but it’s going to be a while before she joins the ranks of Mailer, Kerouac, Didion, et al. Barranti’s refusal to yield to reality is a phenomenon one encounters on the web with alarming frequency: “That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.”
Pick up the yarn, Annika, and step away from the keyboard.
Heck, if we’re going to start throwing around Cody, why not add, oh, what’s his name… made a ton of movies… oh yeah, Stephen King.
Maybe even a little Tom Clancy, just for fun?
Good night, you could keep going damn near forever. Very few actors or actresses are celebrities either, when it comes to pure numbers (trust me, my sister-in-law and her would be starlet friends “borrow” enough from our fridge to prove that). That seems like a very poor measure to use.
By: Julie Scott on May 22, 2008
at 1:17 pm
I resisted adding Stephen King to the list, Julie, due to my personal displeasure with his inane scribblings for the masses but, yup, he most certainly qualifies as Celebrity Writer. I also forgot to add Mark Twain’s name to the list — quite a headline-grabber in his time — but, as I said at BLA, I tried to keep the list to a nicely compartmentalized “ten” so as not to belabour the point … a point that was clearly lost on Barranti.
By: Rodger Jacobs on May 22, 2008
at 1:20 pm
Of course, one could also discuss the vast cultural sickness that the word “celebrity” represents, but I imagine we probably all agree on that. My objection to the LA Times Festival of Books (which, I admit, I participate in) is that it’s one tiny step in the celebritization (if I may coin an obvious word) of authorship. Bless the recluses, for refusing to participate.
By: John Shannon on May 22, 2008
at 4:43 pm
Aside from other cultural influences that dictate this trend you rightfully mention, John, one can easly blame Oprah and her crowd — crowning authors as celebrities on TV shows for bored housewives, hence their books must be good and worth buying. I mean, did you see Cormac McCarthy’s appearance on her show? The man did not want to be there.
By: Rodger Jacobs on May 22, 2008
at 6:12 pm
more americans: erica jong, maya angelou, amy tan …
on the international scene: bernard henri-levy, martin amis, harold pinter …
By: Francais on May 22, 2008
at 8:50 pm
Excellent additions, Francais!
By: Rodger Jacobs on May 22, 2008
at 9:35 pm
Not to be a downer, but I kinda see what she means… ‘celebrity’ as in people whose picture sells people Magazine and who make it on Perez Hilton. Though I certainly think Jack London and Ernest Hemingway qualified in the day.
Diablo whatsername is more famous for being passably hot and dropping many lurid hints at stripperdom and lesbian trysts than her writing, but it counts. I immediately knew who she and an image of her came into my mind, whilst many of the counter-examples are sort of ‘um… yea, I know that person.’
By: David N. Scott on May 23, 2008
at 10:57 am
I don’t deny that Diablo Cody is some kind of celebrity, David; I just refute Barranti’s assertion that a celebrity scribe is a rare bird. And, yes, as you hint at, Cody’s celebrity might be for much more than the quality of her writing — it’s the salacious little details and the hackneyed stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold mythos, which adds up to a Warholian 15 minutes if she doesn’t produce something more substantive than that.
By: Rodger Jacobs on May 23, 2008
at 11:11 am
Ok, having argued with David a bit, I will give him this – if you define celebrity as someone the normal unwashed masses have heard of and that the paparrazi follow around endlessly helping TMZ record their every fast food purchase, then writers have probably never quite broken into that status. And the world is probably better off for it.
By: Julie Scott on May 23, 2008
at 11:13 am
and that the paparrazi follow around endlessly helping TMZ record their every fast food purchase
I don’t know many writers who would bask in that definition of celebrity.
By: Rodger Jacobs on May 23, 2008
at 11:19 am
Bless the recluses, for refusing to participate.
Thank you.
Jean-Paul Sartre was a celebrity, as was Pablo Neruda. Gore Vidal is too…
But we should distinguish between “celebrity” and “public figure.” Continental Europe and also Latin America have a tradition of noted writers becoming public figures, and we don’t have that tradition in this country. Robert Frost, George Plimpton, Gore, Erica Jong, Susan Sontag, Bill Buckley, and in his way Buck Henry all came close in establishing writer-as-public-figure in this country, but the concept isn’t sticking.
Part of the reason is, public figures in this country are necessarily political, and American politics is hard to keep up with, even for a writer. Politics move more slowly elsewhere, slow enough for a novelist to contribute. They move so quickly here that the slow movement of the novelist works against contributing political in an informed way. Lots of novels are political but political novels don’t convert academics to new kinds of thought, in fact, they don’t direct at all, they only typically reflect already existing political opinions. And the reason for this is that American politics is so good at getting new ideas out there, they get them out there even before most writers can think of what might be new. Our pundit class in large measure displaces our writer-as-public-figure sub-class—our pundits are all journalists because it’s only journalists who can keep pace with the exchange of political ideas.
I remember, for instance, Sontag producing a play in Sarajevo. The attitude of American journalists was, “Big deal, you’re just grandstanding, we’ve already been there and come back home.” And they were right. American politics move fast, too fast for writers who don’t.
There were several novels written about 9.11 by some of our most prominent novelists. Hah, they all fell flat, because they had nothing to say that hadn’t already been said.
By: joseph on May 25, 2008
at 10:32 am