Celebrity vs Character

[Teresa Edgerton]

There was a line that I liked in Beautiful Intelligence, Stephen, almost a throw-away line, but it seemed to me to be extremely insightful. It was about how people in the 21st century became more concerned with personality instead of character.

Were you referring to the cult of celebrity, to people who are famous for being famous, and who are admired more for their fame (perhaps even notoriety) than for their actions and strength of character?

If so, I think it would make an interesting discussion. (Or if you mean something else, that might be an interesting discussion, too.)

 

[Stephen Palmer]

It was Manfred riffing on what he perceives (wrongly, I think) as his failure. He's quite an old-fashioned man in some respects, and he finds it hard to reconcile what he's done with what happens as a consequence. He strongly feels the weight of the nexus - in his eyes the nexus is a force which destroys character and replaces it with personality.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Do you think the internet places more emphasis on personality rather than the true character of an individual? Or do you think that Manfred's comment there has no merit?

As writers expected to create and maintain an internet presence, to establish ourselves and our books as a "brand," how much of that (I mean what we are expected to do, whether we can actually stomach doing it or not) would you say is about projecting a personality that easily defines us, rather than something more approaching the complexities of who we really are?

 

[tinkerdan]

There's likely a more complex issue here. When we go out in life we chose to put on many faces.

For example I have a friend and colleague who recently became part of the furry community.

Obviously when he puts that costume on he's another person. But when I look closer I see that when he was at work with us he had yet another face that was slightly different.

He just received a fellowship with the University and is teaching and he puts on yet another face for that and he's a car enthusiast who loves to tinker with the engine and rebuild parts and he has one more face for that.

So we constantly are working on personas that only show us a slight bit of the character underneath the surface.

Our lives can be like an strange onion with layers of persona built over the character; that can be shifted like a demented rubix's cube to fit the occasion affording only tiny glimpses into the real character.

So the internet or some Nexus might facilitate these faces, but do they really change what we already do with persona? We wrap the character in these layers until the character is bound up and isolated from the outside: by the way we want to be perceived.

And now after pondering all of this I'm going to have to read Beautiful Intelligence to find out what it's really all about.

On another note:FYI
Did you know that the Stephen Palmer Bibliography in amazon is a bit fractured and when you go to the author's page this book doesn't show up at all? And you can't get to the author's page directly from the book page by selecting the author's name.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I think Manfred's comment has a lot of merit, but his grasp of what he has done is tenuous - whereas Leonora knows what she has done, and is in denial for most of the novel. Manfred's passion and drive make him rather scatty. He'd be quite annoying to work with, I suspect...

 

[Stephen Palmer]

On another note:FYI
Did you know that the Stephen Palmer Bibliography in amazon is a bit fractured and when you go to the author's page this book doesn't show up at all? And you can't get to the author's page directly from the book page by selecting the author's name.

Will check this out. The Goodreads one was wrong too, but that is now sorted.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I will blog about the Character/Personality thing, as people seem intrigued by it. See JL's review on Goodreads…