Getting into Guinness

by Larry Olmsted

  It doesn’t surprise me that you would have a situation where someone would break one record, enjoy the satisfaction that brought them, and then quickly kind of say as the attention waned and the rush passed, “well one was not bad but what about two.” I would imagine that it would be slightly less satisfying the second time, so they would be inspired to break a more visible record, a record that is more extraordinary or to break it in a more smashing way. You would kind of have to keep one upping yourself so it doesn’t become this humdrum experience of “well, I just broke my thirty-seventh record.” Because how many times really are you going to be able to go back to the office or your church group or whatever and say “I set a Guinness World Record again.” They’ll say “Oh, that’s great. You’ve already been in it thirty times.” So you have to say, “Well this time I walked a thousand miles on one leg while balancing an egg on my head,” and they say “Oh, wow, now that is interesting.” You could see how it would have this hyperbolic effect where you had to keep breaking records and keep on breaking them in a more sensational way in order to get the recognition you want.

  I tell Halpern, who is not an aficionado of the book, about Ashrita Furman and Jackie Bibby, and he nods knowingly.

  It doesn’t surprise me that there are serial record breakers. People are greedy for attention in the same way they are greedy for money. How many people make a million dollars in business and say “well, that’s enough”? They might say at the outset “when I make a million I’ll quit,” or at the blackjack table “when I’m up $50,000 I’m out of here,” but the minute they get to $50,000 they say “geez, if I got this far imagine if I got to $100,000. That’s twice as much money and I could get twice as much stuff and have twice as much security.” You could see how someone would start off saying “I just want to get in the Guinness book and then I’ll be satisfied.” Then they get in and say “well that was great, but I wouldn’t mind a bit more recognition.” Anything that makes you feel good, like money, sex or winning at gambling, has a potentially compulsive or addictive quality to it and you’d want more and more.

  Almost as soon as I set my first Guinness World Record and basked in the brief limelight, friends started asking me “what’s next?” with alarming regularity. Apparently it is not just record setters themselves who are affected in the way Halpern describes. There seemed to be an expectation, almost an obligation, that once I had joined this world-famous club, I’d continue with other feats—one was not enough, even for my limited audience. This sensation was soon fueled by the loss of my record to an anonymous rival. In turn, not only did I begin to ponder more records I could topple, but as Halpern later suggested, I looked at them less for their viability and more for their dramatic appeal—and difficulty for others to break. This was quite a departure from my original logic of seeking out the path of least resistance to get into Guinness. I even began to feel slightly embarrassed by my first record, since it was more a feat of logistics than one of stamina or physical achievement. Anybody who put the same research and creativity in what I did could have broken the golf record, and indeed, my record was quickly eclipsed, in part, as Ashrita describes, because all the media attention I got, along with inclusion in the book, made it a particularly easy target. Next time, I vowed, I would set a difficult record that most people could not pull off, one that I wouldn’t be embarrassed by, and one that had a chance of lasting. Despite my second record having also been published in the book and knowing of people making serious plans to topple it, as of this writing it still stands. I don’t know why, but that makes me happy.

  Maureen Orth, a respected journalist who wrote the book The Importance of Being Famous, with a similar slant to Halpern’s Fame Junkies, wrote “The scorch of fame can be brutal, but the chill of the aftermath is an even stranger, more bitter sensation…. To keep the party going, new stories have to be at the ready. So if you want to extend your notoriety…you’d better have variations in the pipeline to keep the cameras satisfied.” Like Halpern, Orth cites the explosion of media outlets and the increased popularity of reality television, along with the subculture of celebrity-and entertainment-oriented magazines and “news” programs, as part of the shift to a fame-obsessed culture, one that provides the perfect breeding ground for the Guinness World Records. “Since I started reporting on the worlds of entertainment and politics, we’ve moved from a society that admired entertainers with talent, and politicians with intelligence, to a culture in which the goal is just to achieve fame. Being famous now, increasingly, has less to do with talent or with doing anything real, thoughtful or subtle.”

  Record holders like Jackie Bibby and fingernail grower extraordinaire Sridhar Chillal talk about the fame Guinness brings, but does being in the book really make you famous? “It does in a fashion I guess,” admits Halpern.

  Recognition, attention, and validation is the reward. My quick take on the Guinness book’s appeal would be that because of the breadth of things it covers, it would make people feel like setting a record that will be written down for posterity as a world record is an attainable goal. I think that would be especially attractive in a time and place where there is a great premium on fame, which there obviously is today. One of the things I look at in my book is the sense today that fame is more attainable than ever, particularly because back in the ’70s there were just five TV stations: now there are 500. There’s reality TV. In the ’60s and ’70s the Guinness book would be especially attractive as a venue for being famous, since the thought of getting on TV was a lot more farfetched back then. The other aspect of fame is that in some ways it immortalizes you. You might die, but in some way you will live on in this book. “What does my life amount to? What am I leaving behind?” To be in a book that lists all the world records, that’s something.

  Carey Low, the book’s spokesperson for Canada, a hotbed of record-breaking activity, apparently agrees and told the Toronto Sun, “It’s human nature to want to go out and be the best. If you can do something that puts you into the Guinness database or book, you’re doing something amazing.” Increasingly since the early sixties there has been a democratization of records, and the focus has shifted from doing something amazing, to doing something, anything, that will get you in the book—or at least the database. Low’s point seems to be today that the amazing part is simply getting in, rather than the feat itself, which would explain a lot of the records of the washing-machine-throwing variety.

  Halpern’s concept of immortality through accomplishments is not a new idea: it predates the Guinness World Records by at least three thousand years. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating from around the seventh century BCE or earlier, and widely considered the first, or at least the oldest, surviving work of literature, the title character, a mythical hero king of Sumerian legend, spends the entire second half the poem pondering the meaning of immortality after his best friend and fellow stellar warrior, Enkido, is killed. After several opportunities to physically become immortal present themselves but are not availed of, Gilgamesh returns home and considers the strong walls of the powerful city-state he has built and ruled, with the heroic stories of his life carved in stone, and reaches the conclusion that one form of immortality is to be remembered by others for your deeds. No known Western literature predates Gilgamesh, and in a very real sense, our history of reading and writing begins with the notion of achieving immortality through deeds and public recognition, a literary tradition that continues through the latest edition of the Guinness World Records. This concept of “virtual immortality” resonates throughout history and is so important to the Homeric epics, The Odyssey and The Iliad, that it becomes the crux for several crucial plot developments. According to Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, a classics professor at Whitman College in Washington State and a winner of the American Philological Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award, honor and fame are the chief motivations to the Homeric warrior. She wrote, “The Homeric warrior fights for honor (time’) and glory or fame (kleos). Kleos, usually trans
lated to ‘glory’ or ‘fame,’ means what is spoken aloud about one.” Kleos and time’ resonate throughout the rest of the tale, and when Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors, feels his fame or glory has been diminished, he refuses to fight any longer. Vandiver defines the concept of kleos aphthiton as “imperishable glory…the only kind of meaningful immortality available to Homeric warriors.” Since the Greek view of the afterlife was not one offering much in the way of comfort, she concludes that “only kleos provides any significant kind of immortality; the Homeric warrior lives on in what others say about him after he is dead.”

  If this immortality logic seems overly dramatic for the Guinness World Records–induced fame seeker, consider the case of Philip Rabinowitz, an exceptionally fast senior citizen. Already a Guinness World Record holder as the oldest competitive walker, Rabinowitz, a one-hundred-year-old South African fitness fanatic nicknamed “Rabinoblitz” by friends, was a guest on the radio talk show All Things Considered, where he discussed his upcoming attempt to break the world record for the fastest 100-meter-run by a centenarian. When asked why these things were so important to him, Rabinowitz laughingly replied, “When my time goes to go up, I want to tell them there also that I’ve broken records, they must recognize it there as well.”

  Michael Roberts, executive editor of Outside magazine, agrees. “If you’re going for a record, it’s all about recognition, not just the achievement itself. If you care about the record, you are claiming something, just like planting your flag. You become immortal in a sense.”

  The notions of fame and celebrity are so central to the Guinness World Records that they go far beyond the journeyman record holders and into the very fabric of the book’s editorial. Recent editions have given vastly increased coverage to celebrity subjects, most of whom presumably made no effort to get into the book, but rather seem to be sought out by the book’s staffers simply to lend an air of celebrity credibility. If everyday record breakers like Jackie Bibby are “basking in the reflected glory” of the famous Guinness World Records brand by virtue of just being in the book, then the book itself is basking in the reflected glory of Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie, all of whom have large photographs spanning the two-page “Movie Stars” chapter of the 2008 edition, a category that didn’t even exist as recently as 2005. It is hard to imagine that Tom Cruise went online to the record website and filled out an application requesting that he be named earth’s “Most Powerful Actor,” or that the notoriously press-shy Jodie Foster sought attention for having received the highest annual earnings among all actresses. It is far more likely that editors actively searched for ways to include more celebrities in the book, since celebrities sell product, and part of the entire Guinness World Records mystique is that by setting records, the person next door can share the pages with movie stars, recording artists, and athletes. There have always been a huge number of records, including those set by humans, that got in as a result of staffers rather than applicants, but these typically have come in the form of sports records or important firsts. Tom Hanks’s record for most consecutive best actor Academy Awards is public knowledge and quantifiable in a sense no different than a sports record, but Tom Cruise’s record, which the star may never have even heard of, reeks of editorial Guinnessport: there is no similar record for most powerful lawyer or chef.

  Interestingly, the book’s current love affair with Hanks carried over from the 2007 edition, when he and the rest of the crew and cast of The Da Vinci Code, including director Ron Howard, were honored by the book for undertaking the longest nonstop international train journey, a record that seems dubious at best. Apparently the group enjoyed a first-of-its-kind excursion from London to Cannes, in southern France, on the high-speed Euro-star. The actual length of the trip pales in comparison with other point-to-point train routes, such as Ulan Bator to Beijing, but besides coming down to semantics about how one defines a nonstop international journey, this kind of record appears to be a grasp by the book for celebrity recognition, a grasp rewarded by a photo of its trademark certificate in Ron Howard’s hands. The same 2007 edition welcomes a laundry list of “celebrity record holders new to Guinness World Records including Johnny Depp, Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore, and Reese Witherspoon.” Likewise, on the first page of the 2006 edition is a list titled simply “Record Breaking Americans,” which would suggest a sampling from among the thousands of U.S. record holders; yet with the sole exception of Mr. Versatility himself, Ashrita Furman, the list includes nothing but entertainment and sports celebrities, from Lance Armstrong and Will Smith to David Copperfield and Jessica Simpson. A year-to-year comparison of the editions shows a clear fervor building toward celebrity records and coverage, wanted by the stars or not, peaking in 2007 with a three-page foldout spread or centerfold on “Celebrity Secrets,” described as “The Hottest Celebrity Gossip from Guinness World Records.” These include some listings that may or may not be, even by Guinness World Records standards, such as the opaque entry that Paris Hilton was voted most over-exposed celebrity of 2005 by “an online research firm.” Norris McWhirter would likely turn over in his grave at such nonrecord inclusions. This is joined by a multiple-choice quiz asking which of four actors, Russell Crowe, Robert Downey Jr., Courtney Love, or Errol Flynn holds the Guinness World Record as the most jailed actor, complete with photos of each. The book gives the correct answer as Flynn for his four arrests, though depending on how you define actor, it seems implausible that there has not been a thespian jailed more than four times. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter much, as the purpose of the spread seems to be to jam in as many frivolous, nonrecord celebrity photos as possible, and in this case Flynn serves as an excuse to publish otherwise unwarranted photos of more contemporary movie stars alongside his.

  Halpern, the author of Fame Junkies, is far from surprised at this turn of editorial events.

  It’s all part of the same function that you see now with the mainstream media, everyone is scrambling to do celebrity stories because it moves books, magazines, increases viewers. No one is immune to it and it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Guinness book would do whatever it could to in some fashion or another include celebrities, because if they didn’t they would be just about the only publication on the face of the earth that missed the boat. Even the New York Times, which doesn’t usually jump into it, covers celebrities. When Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump had this big fight it was on the front page of the Arts section. I think that there’s this sense now that if you don’t cover celebrities you’ll either be culturally irrelevant or your sales will plummet or both.

  As Stephen Moss wrote in the Guardian, in a salute to Norris McWhirter’s life and work:

  McWhirter bowed out from the GBR in 2001, when the title was sold to a new publisher. He even put his name to a potential rival—Norris McWhirter’s Book of Millennium Records. There appears to have been some unpleasantness. He may have resented the unrelenting popularization of his great work—the attempt to make a mountain of largely redundant facts hip, happening, relevant. That’s not the point of the book at all. Take the introduction to the 2004 edition, illustrated by gratuitous pictures of Eminem (“most successful rap artist ever”) and Pierce Brosnan (“star of the 20th Bond movie”—what sort of record is that?). “Dive in and be inspired by the greatest the world has to offer,” the editor instructs us. Bare-faced hucksterism. Paula Radcliffe’s marathon world record is “incredible, awe-inspiring.” Spare us the hyperbole; just give us the facts.

  In fact, at age seventy-five Norris McWhirter did indeed object to the wholesale changes to the book he had launched decades earlier. In a call for a highbrow British publisher to “rescue” it and restore its reputation as a reference work, McWhirter described the Guinness Book of Records as “virtually unrecognizable now, it’s gone so downmarket. It’s like a stick of multi-coloured liquorice—it doesn’t contain many of the basic records.” The lifelong sports junkie attacked the emphasis on
pop music and football, noting that under his reign the book contained records for eighty-four different sports. His last record work, Norris McWhirter’s Book of Millennium Records, was written for Virgin Publishing and looks remarkably like the Guinness World Records, down to almost identical chapter headings, except for ones such as “Movie Stars,” which is notably absent. McWhirter barely acknowledges celebrities in the tome, mentioning them only in the course of their historical impact on such categories as cinema in the twentieth century.

  But on the other hand, Millennium Records did not become a household name that 65,000 people a year are clamoring to get into, nor one that 3.5 million readers buy annually. The changes to the Guinness book have worked. There was that long period in the seventies and eighties when sales slumped, but they have since rebounded with the wholesale changes, even though not all fans appreciate them. Producer Ben Sherwood, a devoted fan since childhood who has gone behind the scenes at the company and interviewed countless record holders, said recently:

  This business is not motivated by a love of world records or the fascination with human nature. It’s not a lofty enterprise the way one wishes it was. It’s a book put together by people who are marketing people. It was very difficult for me to come to terms with my childhood imagination of what it was and the facts, that how records get in there and how they choose them is very marketing driven. The entire reconfiguration of the book, with pictures and all that, is aimed at teenage boys, and they’ve come up with a much spiffier website. It’s not a sweet or quaint attachment to the idea of settling barroom disputes. It’s about competing with video games and Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s all been done just to compete in the marketplace, whereas what I loved about it was the sort of fuddy-duddiness of it, sort of old fashioned. Old fashioned like an almanac. Now it’s like a cross between Us Magazine and the National Enquirer.