Is the idea of the celebrity memoir as publishing cash cow in decline? In Britain, at least, evidence is mixed. (Link includes some Martin Amis misogyny, if that's your thing.)
Is the idea of the celebrity memoir as publishing cash cow in decline? In Britain, at least, evidence is mixed. (Link includes some Martin Amis misogyny, if that's your thing.)
Is that really misogyny? Dont get me wrong, I think Amis has certainly proven himself capable of, if not a master of, misogyny. But this just seems like a statement of personal taste about somebody whose sole endeavor is to appeal to certain type's personal taste, no? Is it misogynistic simple because of Amis' legacy? Because I happen to agree with him here and I don't think (HOPE) I am considered misogynistic.
Wow. Busy editing for lucidity (we gave up) and found you here. Inneresting!
The full Amis quote is "She has no waist, no arse ... an interesting face ... but all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6447521/Jordan-is-just-two-bags-of-silicone-says-Martin-Amis.html) It might seem to some extent he's implying that were she up to his own or some "purer" standard of beauty she would be worthy of our worship? But I think most damningly, he is slamming the fame she's gained from others' positive appraisals of her physical appearance while indulging in the same shallow appraisals to negate that fame, rather than simply and directly pointing to a lack of talent or wit. I think the misogyny there is deceptively subtle. The perspective that her celebrity is not earned sounds valid enough, but the way in which Amis goes about proving that point is as equally shallow as he's accusing the pop culture of being.
Martin Amis is my thing! And sorry, but where's the misogyny? Price's huge bazooms (made in the U.S.!) made her what she is. His dismissal of her then seems fair--if perhaps a bit wide, what with mention of the arse et al. (Maybe he was just saying that this "role model" for women doesn't look like a real woman, as a result of her efforts--her "work"!--to capture attention? In which case a charge of misogyny here should be re-directed.)
There is a definite urge (don't you feel it?) to never read another word of Amis's. But 'Experience' *was* brilliant, perfectly suited to him - a light comic writer - memoir always being an essentially comic form, wittingly or not.
(Jordan is the perfect subject for a publisher given that she doesn't even read her memoirs, let alone write them. The Eye's 'Bookworm' has suggested the bored ghost takes the piss out of her on nearly every page).
What most amazes me is that these British celebrity memoirs are released in multiple volumes, like Victorian novels. It's safe to assume that these memoirs completely devoid of plot and suspense, among other things, so how the hell are books like Wayne Rooney's autobiography able to sustain narrative interest over *five volumes*???
Meantime, I think I might have read something somewhere that that Susan Boyle or Whichever She Was's album has already sold something like the most something something in the History of Something Or Other and she's surely writing her whole long story, too, and you know it'll sell like hotcakes or whatever the British call pancakes even though they don't eat them.
Five chapters are about her cat, Pebbles, who is also a national hero. It will end on a whodunit cliff hanger: "And then he kissed her!"
It seems possible that Russell Brand's memoir (My Booky Wook) spoiled the curve a bit a few years ago by having been of real literary merit . . . I think that it sold very well in the UK (and likely surprised some people by so doing) and created aftershocks of confused expectation.
The Amis/Price comment was debated in the Guardian books blog a little while back:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/28/martin-amis-katie-price-women
In other Amis news (he is, decidedly, my thing) - the BBC's making a film of Money.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/11/nick-frost-bbc2-martin-amis-money