"He wanted to be successful without being famous"

That's what someone said of the late George Harrison after his untimely death from cancer. It was the singer-songwriter's second bout with the disease, the interregnum between them punctuated by a middle-of-the-night assault by a knife-wielding man that nearly ended Harrison's life. Pop music was too central to popular consciousness for Harrison to be able to realize his desire for success without fame.

For forty-six years, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has been able to be successful without the uncomfortable accoutrements of fame. But now, at age 79, portrayed in an Oscar-nominated movie and about to be portrayed in another film by Sandra Bullock, one wonders if Lee can continue to live in relative obscurity.

Human beings, no matter if they're religious or not, universally display an impulse to worship something or someone. To refer to cults of personality, the way we do, as "idol worship" is more than just idle talk. I take a very little interpretation of the phrase. We put the famous on pedestals, preferring the gods we can see--and ultimately knock off their pedestals, if we so choose--to worshiping the one God beyond our physical sight and beyond our control.

It's the presumption of control that makes celebrity idol worship so dangerous. The worshiper--the fan--begins to believe that they control the object of their worship. The famous chafe under such treatment and then are dismissed as being surly, temperamental, or difficult.

For the particularly insecure celebrity, the worshiping fans really can come to call the shots. One tragic example of this is Elvis Presley. Instead of growing as an artist the way his one-time Sun Record-mate Johnny Cash did, Presley, in spite of enormous talent and huge potential, followed a formulaic route that led not only to his artistic demise, but perhaps his personal fall as well. He was a prisoner of his fan base.

The pressure on Lee to write another Mockingbird must have been intense at times over the past four-and-a-half decades. But she seems to have opted for the solid success of a classic book rather than a profusion of bestsellers. One wonders what might have happened had her Alabama friend, Truman Capote, remained at home as Lee has. Lee can rightly be considered a great writer although she's published only one book in her lifetime.

She's been successful while shying away from fame. Just some lunchtime musings.

[Read today's New York Times profile of Lee here.]