I think as long as you establish yourself as a public figure, you have to consider your life will possibly be shared with everyone. You lose your privacy when you chose that route.
As long as their are famous people there will be curious fans and writers….. and some are grifters just to piggyback on your hard work. It is an invasion of privacy. I’ve experienced that myself a little.
You’re right—whether it's an invasion of privacy or not, this is the tradeoff associated with becoming a public figure. For those who decide to share their lives anyway, hopefully the benefits outweigh the intrusions.
& what Mystical Magical Charlotte Pendragon said below.
However having said above, we the readers need understand authors and their works are different kettles of fish.
The works stand on their own merit but the glimpses into the authors' lives give as a better handle on why.
However reading biographies, finding the person to be a saint or a sinner no matter, the work still stands on it's own and anyway and we need remember, none of us are worthy of casting the first stone.
So yes, biographies are an invasion of privacy and I see such as acceptable.
A broader query; does privacy even exist for anyone in these digital days of cell phones, credit cards, corporate servers and the cloud? If anyone with the money wanted to know things about thee or me they might not be able to say with perfect assurance what we had for breakfast today but they could trace our route through the last week and note each and every item we bought at the grocery stores. No, I do not find this acceptable.
Great point, and you speak to a greater problem, which is that privacy does NOT exist nowadays, and that in some ways, the world is so much worse off for it.
You're right—we need to separate the art from the artist. Biographies make it harder in some ways to do that, but I guess they also make us more aware of the need to.
After all, if there's anything the Internet has shown us, it's that the more information is available, the less people care...
Thanks for the thought provoking article that led to me writing one of my own because you posed questions that I've never thought about before and I had to write out what I was thinking to make some sense of it. Excellent writing.
Yes
I think as long as you establish yourself as a public figure, you have to consider your life will possibly be shared with everyone. You lose your privacy when you chose that route.
As long as their are famous people there will be curious fans and writers….. and some are grifters just to piggyback on your hard work. It is an invasion of privacy. I’ve experienced that myself a little.
You’re right—whether it's an invasion of privacy or not, this is the tradeoff associated with becoming a public figure. For those who decide to share their lives anyway, hopefully the benefits outweigh the intrusions.
Thanks for sharing this.
Yep, warts and all.
& what Mystical Magical Charlotte Pendragon said below.
However having said above, we the readers need understand authors and their works are different kettles of fish.
The works stand on their own merit but the glimpses into the authors' lives give as a better handle on why.
However reading biographies, finding the person to be a saint or a sinner no matter, the work still stands on it's own and anyway and we need remember, none of us are worthy of casting the first stone.
So yes, biographies are an invasion of privacy and I see such as acceptable.
A broader query; does privacy even exist for anyone in these digital days of cell phones, credit cards, corporate servers and the cloud? If anyone with the money wanted to know things about thee or me they might not be able to say with perfect assurance what we had for breakfast today but they could trace our route through the last week and note each and every item we bought at the grocery stores. No, I do not find this acceptable.
Great point, and you speak to a greater problem, which is that privacy does NOT exist nowadays, and that in some ways, the world is so much worse off for it.
You're right—we need to separate the art from the artist. Biographies make it harder in some ways to do that, but I guess they also make us more aware of the need to.
After all, if there's anything the Internet has shown us, it's that the more information is available, the less people care...
Thanks for the thought provoking article that led to me writing one of my own because you posed questions that I've never thought about before and I had to write out what I was thinking to make some sense of it. Excellent writing.
Excellent questions Melissa. I believe most people are trying to understand what drives someone and the real them.
These are interesting questions.
(At some point around the year 2260, people might found out the names of humans behind Rat, but I sure hope it happens later, not sooner.)