A (Semi-Famous) Fame Scholar Takes In the Knicks’ Courtside Celebs

His new book, “How to Become Famous,” analyzes the forces that make for extraordinary success—reputational cascades, network effects, power-law distributions. Luck is essential. Early champions help. Posthumous attention works wonders. “You need to be minimally talented,” he allowed, but said that talent wasn’t enough. “The number of people who have the capacity to be spectacularly successful or famous—and who are amazing—is very high. And they just didn’t get a chance.” The book reads like a gentle intervention for the sort of reader who would buy it, and a repudiation of the company it is bound to keep at airport bookstores—the self-actualization manuals that identify some quality possessed by the Connies, Seths, Tracys, Edies, and Patricks of the world, in order to prescribe a regimen for success.