Famous

Lancelot Blue Dunkquist, a thirty-eight-year-old legal secretary living above his parents' garage in Huntersville, North Carolina, has been mistaken for Oscar-winning actor James Jansen eighty-seven times. After he is fired from a Charlotte law firm, Lance uses part of his $41,617.21 savings to buy expensive clothes and remodel his appearance. He flies to New York, where his resemblance and carefully studied mannerisms convince strangers, a Columbia acting professor, and an off-off-Broadway director that he is Jansen. His attempt to perform in a play ends with him forgetting his lines, vomiting onstage, and collapsing. Rather than abandon the imposture, he decides that celebrity depends on being recognized more than on acting skill.

In Los Angeles, Lance stays with his younger brother Bo, whose welcoming family life contrasts with Lance's desire to be remembered by strangers. He rents a Lamborghini to make his impersonation more convincing, gains entry to an exclusive club as Jansen, and meets Amy Suthers, a UCLA art-history graduate student. Their growing affection is real to Lance, but Amy believes she is dating the movie star. When Lance invites her to call him by his actual name, she treats it as a playful alternative to Jim rather than as a confession. Bo argues that caring for his son gives his life meaning; Lance dismisses that kind of fulfillment and remains determined to escape obscurity.

Lance stakes out Jansen's Hollywood Hills home, follows a car from the property, and finally meets the actor in a jazz club. Jansen is drinking heavily and is astonished by their resemblance. He invites Lance home, shows him his Academy Award, and initiates an intimate encounter. Lance suddenly strikes Jansen repeatedly with the Oscar, then begins living in his house, using his money, clothes, phone, and car, and answering professional contacts as if he were Jansen. Later, he has to deal with the figure he left in the yoga room and drags the remains into a shallow hole on the hillside. The narration does not explain the figure's apparent movement or provide a clinical account of Jansen's death.

Lance takes Amy to a film premiere and Richard Haneline's party, where guests accept him as Jansen but also expect him to know the actor's friends, recover from apparent substance-use problems, finish a screenplay, and return to serious acting. Director Linwood Beame urges him to read for a major film role. Afraid that his inability to perform or recall Jansen's history will expose him, Lance deliberately drives Jansen's Porsche into a ravine. He expects a survivable accident to provide a plausible explanation for the amnesia he plans to claim.

The story ends on April 15, 2003, four years after the crash. In Jansen's Montana cabin, the narrator is paralyzed from the neck down, extensively burned, and profoundly forgetful following a coma that, according to a note he reads, lasted until the previous September. The note identifies him as James Jansen, and he holds the Oscar in his lap. His nurse Pam tells him that Bo Dunkquist keeps calling and wants to see him, but he cannot remember whether he knows Bo. Rather than seek an account of his previous life, he attends to the lake, mountains, and sky and feels content in that moment. The ending shows the cost of Lance's attempt to become someone else without resolving the full extent of what the narrator understands about his identity.