The Narcissistic Pursuit of Narcissism

Let’s say you’re given just a couple of days, a week at most to live. It happens all the time. People go to the doctor and get bad news, a lousy prognosis while the rest of us are deciding whether we are going to have fish or meat for dinner. But let’s also say that you can’t get rid of the longing for attention that has always dogged you. Do you think you still have time to get a book out of this and will it be a novel or one of those non-fiction accounts, in this case of your short lived battle with chronic illness? Maybe if it’s a memoir you'll deal with this very tendency to experience grandiose fantasies even as you're on the brink of non-existence. Perhaps you'll title the book The Narcissistic Pursuit of Narcissism; in spite of your years of self-involvement you'll be praised for a relentless search for attention that dogged you right to the grave. In the book you'll describe how you put off dying for several hours or even a half a day so that you could complete the last chapter which was a summary of all the things you were never appreciated for. You'll describe how your last breathes were given up to the hope of posthumous fame. Part of what will be driving you will be the fact that there’s a certain cachet to being an artist or writer who'd not discovered in his own life time. Even though he was an aristocrat, Guiseppe di Lampedusa had trouble getting the attention of the Italian literary establishment and The Leopard, was only published after his death. And he wasn't the only one. The photographer Vivian Maier only achieved renown after she’d died. You realize your death is going to be your big opportunity and you throw yourself into the endeavor, refusing to see any loved ones, whose ministrations might impinge on your writing time. You decide to be an objective observer and keep six degrees of separation from your own end. The only rub is that you'll never know if your sacrifice pays off.

You’re So Vain

“Your so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” were Carly Simon’s words. The title of the song might really be Narcissus because it’s a wonderful contemporizing  of the famous character from mythology who drowns while staring at his own image. It's gotten to the point where the N word is so ubiquitously and frivolously used that it’s become almost meaningless. The word “narcissism” is like a stock that has split many times and undergone a great deal of dilution. Everyone is a narcissist and there are those who feel no compunctions describing themselves as such, much in the way that there are heavy drinkers who exhibit a certain bravado about their alcoholism. What’s brilliant about Carly Simon’s lyrics is that they function like a very good case study, like say “Anna O.” or the "Rat Man." In fact, Simon would later reveal who was the subject of her song (“Carly Simon finally reveals the subject of You’re So Vain...record producer David Geffen,” Daily Mail 2/26/10). In describing her character, she says “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.” One eye in the mirror is indeed different from Narcissus whose two eyes were undoubtedly employed in his self-hypnosis. But the one eye is in effect a more incisive description of a wily pathology. A true narcissist gives you the impression that he or she is paying attention to you with at least one eye. Such pandering is in fact how they get your eyes on them. And what you're staring at is them doing a little dance, a gavotte. It’s a perfect lyric since it’s so different from an over ripe term like narcissism. You either know it or you don’t, but it’s disarming. Narcissus is of course not the only mythological figure used by psychoanalysts and psychologists to coin a condition. Oedipus was the most famous character from antiquity whose narrative was conscripted to describe a dynamic. But there are times when a poem or story, in this the lyrics to a song, can provide a fresh perspective. Why doesn’t Carly Simon compose a song based on the Oedipus or Electra complex?