Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstandings that can gather around a new name.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Here is a good example of a sentence begging to be misunderstood. The idea behind it is at least half right, although it would have no force unless it was partly wrong.
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When he actually had enough to say that he wanted to be understood, Rilke turned out sentences that you could write a book about.
Fame is not only the sum of the misunderstandings that can grow around a name, it also depends on the understandings that do not grow around it.
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Lindbergh tested high-performance aircraft, probably shot down a Japanese aircraft in combat, pioneered long-distance routes for Pan Am, and generally lived out a productive life. His fame is in two parts, like Brecht's: He is the hero and the villain. For the thoughtful, it is in three parts: He is also one of the first victims of the celebrity culture. (There would have been no kidnapping if he had not been so publicized.) But it ought to be in at least four, because behind all the personae determined by events there was a personality that remained constant. He valued self-reliance, possibly too much: It made him hate collectivism so blindly that he thought fascism was the opposite, instead of the same thing in a dark shirt. Yet there is something magnificent about a man who could make a success out of any task he tackled. To complete Rilke's observation —— and it is an observation, because it answers visible facts —— we must accept this much: To measure the distortion of life we call fame, it is not enough to weigh the misunderstandings against the understandings. We have to see through to the actual man and decide whether, like so many artists, he is mainly what he does, or whether he has an individual and perhaps even inexpressible self, like the lonely flyer.
