Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity

I joke among my friends -- who are almost all obsessed with making it big in the computer industry or the music business -- that Seattle is the land of Microsoft, Microbreweries, and Microcelebrities. David Shields, best known for his novels such as Dead Languages, has written a droll, sometime hilarious, and consistently important factual fiction about this pathological passion for celebrity. Remote seems to be based on the Socratic dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living. But unlike elitist social critics, Shields has had the courage to examine his own fascination with fame, instead of pointing an accusing finger at "them", whoever "they" might be. Like Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, Shields seems to argue that it is we ourselves who are to blame for the cargo cult of fame, in which outriggers have been replaced by remote controls as the carriage of choice. Without worshippers, there cannot be deities -- and without channel surfers, there cannot be celebrities.