That's why authors and directors appeal to me so much, because they exist at a weird halfway point. Their names are famous, but unlike film and sports stars, they can walk down the street unnoticed. We imprint on their work, not on their face or body. If you can eat dinner at a good restaurant in Cleveland without being recognized, you're probably not famous. A lot of people who think of themselves as 'famous' just aren't, not on that scale.
People can be well-known within their field, but being famous involved being known outside that.
If I'm at a writer's conference, I can be famous sometimes within that tiny world, but I don't deal with that all the time. In my tiny glimpses of what fame can be like, though, I see how there's a private self that can be very different from what the public is imprinting on your face, your image. At the end of this century, we as Americans seem to be channeling many of our desires through celebrity and mass culture. This book is a series of sketches based on that idea. I don't have any sort of thesis as to why that is, but I have some tentative thoughts, based on my own experiences.