Fame

I'm a bit more than 400 pages into david foster wallace's infinite jest, which he hanged himself twelve years after publishing, and encountered this passage on fame that resonated with me. I've been having several conversations with different close friends and people whose opinions I value and trust, about how to measue the value of a person, what gives a life 'meaning,' and how fame factors into all of these different measures of value.
So, for obvious reasons, when it saw me this passage practically reached out and grabbed me by the throat.

The context is a young athlete coming to a guru, concerned about the degree he which he BURNS to be famous. After some questions he concludes that he wants his photograph in the glossy magazines for the sense of meaning it must give to those famous men who are photographed, and who know people they'll never meet look at their photograph.

The guru responds:

"After the 1st photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, perhaps. ... After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not ENJOY their photos being in magazines so much that they fear their photos will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped. ... To be envied, to be admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame. ... There is much fear in fame. The truth is that world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer w the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage."

(The student then says:)
"So I'm stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame."

(Guru:)
"You might consider that escape from a cage must surely require awareness of the fact of the cage..."

Anyway, if you're committed to literature and can adjust to a book that requires not just your full attention, but both of your hands, to read, you should pick this one up. I can't say whether I like it, but I'm enjoying the experience of reading it.
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