Margaret Atwood and Indiegogo Fame

Fame comes in many forms, I see from the June 19 issue of the Globe & Mail, which is all about the nature of fame.

British Columbia artist Emily Carr, James Adams tells us, is famous “in a Canadian sort of way”. Hmm, what might that be? It seems to involve death and apotheosis, well, not all the way. It’s “tantalizingly close, yet forever receding,” a semi-apotheosis. 

Then there is the fame of photographer Helmut Newton who is presumably famous in a German-Australian way. Or maybe it’s fame by association: Newton is buried next to Marlene Dietrich. Or fame by nostalgia. His renewed fame is due to the fact that “fashion moves stealthily toward a certain 1970s aesthetic,” Lynn Crosbie observes.

Then there is fame through Oprah’s book club. Luckily for the authors involved, that type of fame doesn’t necessarily involve death. Mortification helps (see James Frey’s apology and my blog of 5 May).

Finally there is involuntary fame, which involves legal action. That’s what happened to a graffiti artist using the moniker SLOW. He lost his anonymity through a new technology, Graffiti Tracker, as Michael Kesterton informs us.