Fame and why it might not be all you hoped it should be

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A recent post by member @mrtoffee titled 'What is so appealing about fame' chimed with something I heard on the radio this morning (or maybe it was yesterday) about the author David Gregory Roberts who has just published a new book after announcing on his website in Jan 2014 that he was 'retiring from public life'. Many of you will now be thinking it's rather irrelevant that someone you probably never heard of is now even more invisible to you than before but I find his case fascinating. Roberts is the author of just one book (as far as I know) but it's an absolute stonking block-buster of a book called Shantaram. It's based on his life in the underworld of Indian crime society and it's the type of book that's passed from hand to hand between travellers. Mine was at least 3rd or 4th hand and came to me from an American woman who'd just walked from Manali to Leh. You need know only two things about that walk - it's a long way and it's almost all uphill. Bearing in mind that a lot of what he writes about is at best not entirely legal and much of it is definitely illegal, you could be forgiven for understanding that Roberts is not hungry for publicity. He's made his money, had a film made based on the book and just published a follow up but he's clearly uncomfortable with the merry-go-round of book tours and publicity. So he's told his publishers that he will not give any support to the book via readings, signings, interviews etc. I recall that I had a deep crush on the bad boy character of Shantaram's leading man, Lin. And I equally recall that when I saw pictures of Roberts I was deeply disappointed by the disconnect between my imagination and his reality. I can imagine that not fitting the image you've created for yourself, and getting older and less attractive than before, may be reasons why a lot of authors would choose to withdraw and leave their readership with the vaseline-lens soft-focused photos of their youthful book jackets or even better the sexy charismatic mind pictures we've built up for the on reading their books. It seems to me that creating a little bit of mystery for yourself - in the style of David Gregory Roberts or much more famously, JD Salinger - is not a bad idea at all. When the public demand more, give them less.