Hard to be humble

It is the ego we are talking about here. You might as well make a correction and say that the ego is what we have always been talking about, indeed have been nurturing throughout the course of human civilisation. And proof of that is what comes through in this gripping little book wherein you once more have cause to meet the famous and the illustrious, but this time with a difference though.
And where do you find the difference? It shines through the heavy praise they heap on themselves. Remember Winston Churchill describing his own luminosity by looking at himself as a glow-worm amidst all the worms around him? That is ego for you. In case you were inclined to think, in the old-fashioned way, that the ego is something to be embarrassed about, observe what John Cassavetes has to say about it: 'It's bullshit when people say that ego is a bad trip. It's the only trip. You are who you are because of your ego; without it nothing counts.'
And there you are. As you flip through the pages of this book, you find experience as also the life you have lived through taking on increasingly stranger hues. Your notions of the human personality change when you have the actor Paul Newman tell Edwin Miller, 'You know, you are privileged to have this interview.' You are aghast. How much more horrible can people be, no matter how lightly you may sometimes observe the workings of the hubristic in them? The boxer Muhammad Ali, never one to shy away from self-praise, comes forth with that in-your-face remark: 'When you're as great as I am, it's hard to be humble.' What do you make of that? And what happens to the values, one of them being humility, you have grown up with? Not even the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche could hold himself back from self-adulation. Here is how he does it, in his own words: 'I'm not a man --- I'm dynamite'. You fall back, exhausted, on your sofa or bed or floor or wherever you are. Aren't philosophers expected to be meek and mild?
Never mind the answer. Just move on. Listen to what the writer Noel Coward says about his own place in the universal scheme of things: 'I am an enormously talented man, after all it's no use pretending that I am not, and I was bound to succeed.' And Jerry Hall about herself? 'I think if I weren't so beautiful, maybe I'd have some more character', says she. Yes, she is beautiful all right, but it is beauty not tempered with the self-effacing. But why blame her? Robert Benchley, whose writings you have always loved reading, takes us by surprise by his view of himself: 'It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was already famous.' Maybe that is tongue-in-cheek. But you marvel at the ego just the same. Even Albert Camus had his own contribution to make to the history of the human ego when he noted, 'I conceived at least one great love in my life, of which I was always the object.' Truman Capote is not far behind him. This is how he looks at his enormous talent: 'I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.' You've got to admit you can't beat that sort of self-assessment.
Pure, unadulterated arrogance is what you collide into when you meet George Bernard Shaw. His hubris was prodigious and legendary. Here is just one instance of it: 'I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.' Remember Charles de Gaulle? Pride was his forte, often for very legitimate reasons. He once said he was, politically, neither on the left nor on the right but above. Here's a little more: 'I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.'
Read on. By the time you are through reading, your head will be in a spin and your emotions in a state of turmoil. Your own ego will have taken a backseat to those of all these people you have been reading about.

Shahan Haq studies comic situations and sometimes writes about them