The Truth About Ridicule

On this day in 1810, Lord Byron swam the Hellespont, in emulation of the romantic myth of Leander's swims to visit his beloved Hero. He came upon the narrow strait in northwestern Turkey while in the midst of his two-year tour of the Mediterranean. Byron was twenty-two and not yet famous for his poetry or his excesses, although he had just finished the first draft of Childe Harold, and had just ended, while in Malta, his first serious affair with a married woman. In spite of this, the poem Byron wrote after the Hellespont swim shows him capable of ridiculing not only Romanticism but himself.

Recently, the life of a B-list "celebrity" has paralleled that of Lord Byron's by imitating a mythic event then chronicling her exploits. Nicole Richie, now twenty-four and famous only for her excesses, has written The Truth About Diamonds, a book that describes how Richie, like the infamous Trojan Horse, has been entered by hordes of men. Richie reportedly hadn't read much of anything before writing her book because she "always thought people who wrote books were supersmart, so I figured you had to be supersmart to read books, too; but now that I've written one, I know better." When she was asked if the plot was autobiographical, Richie retorted, "Of course. Who else's autobiography was I going to write?" It seems that Richie shares more with Byron than a reckless desire for meaningless sex; she, too, is capable of poking fun at herself, albeit inadvertantly.