Google and the narcissistic author

Search engines are wonderful things. Not only can you learn more about your own presence in cyberspace but you can learn who else shares your name. I'd like to think mine is somewhat distinctive, but it so happens that I share it with a young British actor and director (we are set apart by the fact that my first name has a double "s") who may, if he Googles us, be somewhat put off by finding that I have written about the IRA. In years past I also have used "David Farren" as my pen name only to find that there is not just one well-known artist with this name but two (not to mention at least one rock musician).

However, one of the really remarkable things is how many listings there can be for a book. I have two in print and a few more out of print, but a search engine comes up with page after page of availability from online book dealers worldwide. Most, I find, are linked one way or another with Amazon.com, but it does create the somewhat misleading impression that copies of my titles are actually sitting on shelves in Europe, Asia, and wherever. As a sufficiently narcissistic author this is a delightful fantasy, bettered only by finding that one or another of my books is actually listed in a university or public library catalog, just waiting for the eager reader.

However, if I am to judge from a recent Frontline episode about teenagers and social networking (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/), being known in cyberspace as an author is somewhat like being a carnivore sitting in a vegan restaurant: completely out of place in a new and improved society. The program made the point that teenagers do not read books. Hit the Internet and get the SparkNotes for Hamlet and your homework is done, allowing the appropriate amount of time for Facenet schmoozing. Everything is instant communication and instant reward. The Internet allows anyone to publish his or her most random thoughts in a complete democracy of opportunity, so why waste time attempting to savor Shakespeare's feeling for the use of language.

I think back to my life shortly after leaving the Jesuits. This was in 1962, and like many other former priests and scholastics my career options were somewhat limited to continuing as a teacher. A military school in West Los Angeles needed a Latin teacher who also could handle math courses, so I was back in the classroom. Later, since I had my MA in philosophy, I was able to move on to the community college level, just in time to get caught up in the counterculture of the period. A few articles for America and Commonweal in which I commented on the scene allowed the basis for a series of books. All along I had helpful editors whose bottom line depended on having me write as well as I could. Occasionally there would be some indication that I had appreciative readers (although when the War College in Washington asked to reprint one of my Commonweal articles I did have to wonder why), but for the most part I had no idea about how much discussion I ever stirred up.

And what is different now? One thing, obviously, is that I can sit down at a keyboard and commit something to cyberspace and therefore add to my listings on a search engine--not quite the same as counting up my friends on Facebook, but for us true narcissists it may have to do. If I tap into the mother lode of reader interest, potentially more individuals may see this blog than have ever read any of my articles or books, and I too will have my Warholian fifteen minutes of fame.

However, something will be missing. Whatever any of us from an older generation ever hoped to achieve as authors, apart from the thought that we could retire on our royalties, it was that our work would be remembered. The great Roman writer Cicero had suggested that this was the only real immortality he might expect, and the fact that for several centuries Latin students would have to sweat through translating him as part of what a liberal education was all about meant that really he had outlasted his time. However, when not even young Jesuits any longer have to study study Latin, much less wrestle with the artifices of Latin literature, his days are gone. Shakespeare, as I learned from Frontline, is already fading. So there will be the entries coming up on a search engine for whatever can be ordered online, but the irony will be that when a great author's achievement will be, at best, what can be summed up in a SparkNotes summary others of us will have to settle for this much immortality and no more.