The thrill of being recognized

I had just left Tate Britain and was heading toward the Pimlico underground station when I noticed an attractive woman coming toward me. I smiled at her and she smiled at me. And then she stopped and said, “Are you Cosmo Landesman?”

There are writers and journalists who get public recognition like this all the time. Alas, I’m not one. But I was married to one of them, and it’s a real drag having a famous partner. You have to stand there at the supermarket checkout line with a big fake smile on your face as your loved one laps up all the love from some adoring fan. Imagine how poor John Gregory Dunne must have felt being married to the very recognizable Joan Didion.

Having a famous writer friend is also a bummer. Socially, you will always be in their shadow. They will be chatting away with some literary groupie who will at some point turn to you and ask, “And what do you do?” You tell them you’re a writer too, but they’re not interested. Your famous friend, sensing the snub, will come to your rescue and explain that you’re also a really great writer! This will be ignored. You will be ignored. And you will dash to the bar.

I know a journalist who recently posted on Facebook that he’d gone to some festival and three different people came up to him and asked if he was who he was. My friend was in heaven. And even though he knew it was uncool to boast about this on social media, he just couldn’t help himself.

But he shouldn’t have worried; high-brow writers and low-life hacks do it. Susan Sontag used to go to the theater and walk around the auditorium before the lights went down, pretending to look for a friend — just so that people could see her and whisper, “Look, there’s…”

Beneath the high-minded aspirations of literary men and women there lurks this rather small and sad desire for their fifteen minutes of fame. This is why they go to book festivals and take part in panel discussions — not, as it might seem, to discuss the state of the American novel — but so they can be seen and stroked.

Let me make it clear: I’m just as desperate for the love and attention of strangers as the next sad sack. But we’re all embarrassed to admit it because intelligent, well-read and critically aware people are meant to be above such crass cravings. Actually, we’re worse than the wannabes on social media because we who are so critical of celebrity culture should know better.

So on those very rare occasions when public recognition comes my way I have to fight the urge not to lunge at the person and wrap them in my arms and give them a big I-love-you-thank-you-so-much hug!

The attractive stranger I met on the street asked: did you get my email?

What email, I said?

It turned out that she had read my book about the death of my son, Jack and Me: How Not to Live After Loss and had written an email to my publisher saying how moving, brilliant and even funny my book was.

Her son’s name was also Jack. And he had died in the same year as my son Jack. And they were roughly the same age.

Back home I got my publisher to send me her original email. I read it and I wept. It wasn’t the usual “sorry for your loss” stuff, but thoughtful and touching. It was just the kind of beautiful email every writer dreams of getting.

Now, here’s the thing. If I had not been on that street at that exact moment, I would never have met that woman or read her moving email. She doesn’t live in the UK and was here in London for a short visit, so the chances of our meeting were near zero.

And if not for that chance encounter on the street, I would not have spent a lovely Sunday afternoon with her, eating strawberries and ice cream in bed and having terrific sex!

What are the odds, eh? Book. Sons. Loss. Sex. And strawberries.

Yes, I know that nobody wants to hear about some old white guy having terrific sex. Tales of going gaga, prostate problems, falling over, loneliness, incontinence and so on are all suitable topics for us older guys — but terrific sex? No thanks.

But why? Is this down to pure ageism? I’m not sure. Not long ago I would have said it was due to the cult of youth. But we no longer envy the young — we pity them.

I think part of the answer is that we’ve all become so bored with sex. It’s become very fashionable to be terribly blasé about the whole business.

I’m always reading articles by people — usually women in their late fifties — who say that they’ve never been happier now that they’ve given up sex. And men too claim that it’s “overrated” and they’d rather just potter about in their man shed than have sex. Chastity, goes the glib journalistic claim, is the new coitus — or some such rubbish. For as Dr. Johnson never said, he who is tired of sex is tired of life.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 2024 World edition.