If you want fame, Cass Sunstein says, it typically requires some of both \u2014 and is no pure meritocracy<\/p>\n
The Beatles, William Shakespeare, or even Taylor Swift. The reason why these artists are so famous and admired surely must be because their talents are simply extraordinary and undeniable.<\/p>\n
Maybe \u2026 maybe not, says Harvard Law School\u2019s Cass R. Sunstein in his forthcoming book, \u201cHow to Become Famous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunstein examines the career paths of ultra-successful individuals, bands, movies, and even the Mona Lisa in order to distill what separates the winners from everyone else. (Hint: Talent, ambition, and hard work matter, but so do luck and timing, among other factors.)<\/p>\n
The Gazette spoke to Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, about the ingredients of fame. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n
I think the biggest misconception is this: Many of us believe that people become famous because they\u2019re amazing in terms of quality. It\u2019s tempting to think that if someone makes it big, it\u2019s because they are musically extraordinary, or they have a fantastic business sense, or they\u2019re politically gifted, or \u201cGosh, can they write a novel!\u201d And while those things certainly are very helpful, it\u2019s a misconception to think those will allow you to get to the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n
There is no set of shared characteristics that famous people have. Success and fame depend on 1,001 different factors, and there isn\u2019t a unifying set.<\/p>\n
We see books and academic articles that purport to show that if you have certain characteristics, you\u2019re highly likely to make it big. These extremely impressive works depend on a common error: They ask what are the unifying characteristics? But the unifying characteristics of the successful or the famous are often something that people who have failed and never become famous also have.<\/p>\n
If you can show that famous people in business, for example, are impatient or are good listeners, or that they are decisive, you have not shown that those characteristics account for fame or success in business. There are plenty of people who are impatient or decisive, for example, who never make it.<\/p>\n
To isolate the ingredients of fame or success is a fool\u2019s errand. Having said that, it is true that people who become famous typically benefit from a network of enthusiasts. If you look at Jane Austen\u2019s success or The Beatles\u2019 success or blues legend Robert Johnson\u2019s success, they had a network of supporters who were pretty relentless. That network of supporters could also have done very well if they\u2019d been enthusiastic about somebody else.<\/p>\n
A key moment was that it was stolen in 1911, long after DaVinci produced it. The theft was critical to the emergence of the \u201cMona Lisa\u201d as the most famous painting in the world. Without that theft, it probably would now be one of a set of paintings that people think are very good.<\/p>\n
The theft was valuable because many people thought: \u201cWhy would someone steal it if it wasn\u2019t amazing?\u201d Also, it made that particular painting extremely salient. It was very much the object of discussion as a result of the 1911 theft. But until the 1860s, even art critics didn\u2019t say a whole lot about it. When it was painted in the early 16th century, it was well-regarded, but it wasn\u2019t seen as a masterpiece.<\/p>\n
For The Beatles, the most dramatic point is they couldn\u2019t get a record deal in England. They got turned down repeatedly. EMI, a big recording company, said no; Decca said no. The Beatles thought that was the end. Their manager, Brian Epstein, went to every record company and every one of them said no to The Beatles.<\/p>\n
What happened for them was that two people at EMI offered to pay for the cost of recording a Beatles record \u2014 two people who weren\u2019t the bosses but who worked for the company. Without that, who knows what would have happened? It\u2019s not clear The Beatles would have gotten a recording contract.<\/p>\n
Of course, there were moments before that that made The Beatles possible. Paul had to meet John at a crucial moment when John was in a mood to invite Paul to join The Beatles, and at a moment when Paul was brave enough to play a song on the guitar for John. Might they have met on some other occasion? Maybe. Yes, they were in Liverpool. But would they have joined forces \u2014 who knows?<\/p>\n
The reason it\u2019s very hard to predict success and failure is that success depends often essentially on what happens to the product, not what happens in the product. If you release a movie, then there are things happening in the first weeks that determine success or failure, and those things are really hard to predict.<\/p>\n
You can market it hard, but it might be that everyone\u2019s busy and won\u2019t take up your marketing opportunities. Or that it\u2019s a slow time. There\u2019s no crystal ball because there are a set of things that are going to follow a release that are extremely hard to predict.<\/p>\n
Roughly, I would say that all successful persons or works have a particular narrative that overlaps with but isn\u2019t the same as that of others \u2014 though there may be some common features (or not!).<\/p>\n
With \u201cStar Wars,\u201d the phenomenal originality of the movie was a necessary condition for its success; the visual amazingness of \u201cStar Wars\u201d wasn\u2019t sufficient for success but was essential to its success. The narrative exuberance of the movie was a big boost. It also had the advantage of word of mouth like crazy. That is different from what happened with Jane Austen or The Beatles, but it overlaps.<\/p>\n
Is there a counterfactual world in which \u201cStar Wars\u201d didn\u2019t make it? Because history is only run once, we don\u2019t know. But we do know that the studio and the participants didn\u2019t predict what happened, which raises doubts about the claim of inevitability. Because I love \u201cStar Wars\u201d so much, it\u2019s very hard for me to think its success wasn\u2019t inevitable. But what we know about success and failure, and fame and obscurity, suggests that its success was not, in fact, inevitable.<\/p>\n
To your point about luck and serendipity. Those are good words, but they\u2019re black boxes, and it\u2019s very good to peer beneath the hood. One thing that the book tries to do is to say, here\u2019s what happened with Jane Austen; here\u2019s what happened with The Beatles; here\u2019s what happened with Stan Lee and Marvel Comics.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s what didn\u2019t happen with the 19th-century literary figure Leigh Hunt, who\u2019s very good, but relatively obscure, and here\u2019s what didn\u2019t happen with Scottish novelist Mary Brunton, who was thought by many, in her time, to be as good as Jane Austen, maybe better.<\/p>\n
There are a zillion people in human history who could have been iconic, or something in that direction, who never made it. One reason is they may have been born in a time and place where they had the wrong gender or the wrong demographic or the wrong skin color or wrong religion. (By wrong, I mean unfavorable for opportunity or success.)<\/p>\n
Another possibility is that they really produced something, but it got lost while they were alive. Maybe it will be discovered in 2038, and we\u2019ll think, \u201cHow did we not know about that person?\u201d There are books in attics by people who had the capacity to write and the opportunity to write but got lost. It might be any number of things.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re all around us \u2014 children who can do amazing things, who might do those things. The world might benefit from them if they get a chance. Muhammad Ali, one of my heroes, had his bicycle stolen when he was 12. He loved his bicycle. And he came up to a police officer and said, \u201cMy bicycle was stolen. I want to whup that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police officer, who happened to have access to a boxing gym, said to him, \u201cWell, if you want to whup somebody, you better learn to box.\u201d And Ali said, \u201cOkay.\u201d There are people like that all around. And that might give us a sense of inspiration, from the possibilities that are all around us, and a sense of humility about the modesty of the difference between people like Stan Lee, who became iconic, and people who didn\u2019t become iconic. The difference isn\u2019t that big.<\/p>\n
Author: Christina Pazzanese (Harvard Staff Writer)<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Liz Zonarich\/Harvard Staff<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you want fame, Cass Sunstein says, it typically requires some of both \u2014 and is no pure meritocracy The Beatles, William Shakespeare, or even Taylor Swift. The reason why these artists are so famous and admired surely must be because their talents are simply extraordinary and undeniable. Maybe \u2026 maybe not, says Harvard Law\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_scj_primary_category_id":130,"_scj_featured":true,"_scj_featured_from":"","_scj_featured_until":"","_scj_featured_order":286,"_scj_visibility_class":"current","_scj_layout_family":"standard","_scj_article_style":"","_scj_display_overrides":[],"_scj_intro_image_id":18293,"_scj_intro_alt":"Better to be talented or lucky?","_scj_intro_caption":"","_scj_intro_class":"","_scj_intro_float":"","_scj_full_image_id":18293,"_scj_full_alt":"Better to be talented or lucky?","_scj_full_caption":"","_scj_full_class":"","_scj_full_float":"","_scj_media_type":"","_scj_media_provider":"","_scj_media_external_id":"","_scj_media_url":"","_scj_media_poster_id":0,"_scj_media_width":0,"_scj_media_height":0,"_scj_media_aspect_ratio":"","_scj_media_description":"","_scj_gallery_items":[],"_scj_related_post_ids":[],"_scj_additional_authors":[],"scj_layout_family":"standard","scj_media_provider":"","scj_media_url":"","scj_full_caption":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"yoast_head":"\n