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On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Shonda Rhimes, creator of shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, is publishing a book, Year of Yes, which explores a year in her life as a force in Hollywood. Celebrity books are now such a prominent feature of the cultural landscape that in recent years the New York Times appended a separate Celebrities list to its authoritative Best Sellers List.
Because she has experience as a show runner for several hit TV series, Rhimes’ book will likely offer useful insights into her industry. By contrast, the best that can be said of the lion’s share of celebrity books is that they provide work for ghostwriters. Indeed, the ghost is so crucial to the packaging of most celebrity memoirs that one literary agent recently confessed to National Public Radio that she has had some authors who “basically never even read their books.” The public, alas, is not so discerning.
Celebrity books are packaged to sell, which they nearly always do. The personal revelations celebrities divulge are usually already known to the readers (or fans, as they should more correctly be called), having often been incubated on a reality TV show or in the pages of glossy women’s magazines. The memoirs are glued together with flip advice or self-help tips such as comedian Amy Poehler’s sage words, “If it’s not funny, you don’t have to laugh.” (I’m not laughing.)
As I write this, the New York Times Celebrities Best Sellers List features a book of essays entitled I Hate Myselfie, by Shane Dawson, who is described on Wikipedia as “an American YouTube personality,” and whose casual vulgarities are unrepeatable here. Also currently on the New York Times list is Forgiveness: A Memoir, by Chiquis Rivera (written with Ezra Fitz). Rivera, a Latina singer whose first taste of celebrity came from appearing on the reality TV show of her late mother, the singer Jenni Rivera, has much to forgive: sexual abuse by her father, Jose Marin, now serving a thirty year prison term, and ugly rumors that she was sleeping with her stepfather Esteban Loaiza.
Although writers partial to the F-word dominate the current celebrity best-seller list, there are occasionally more highbrow offerings. Murphy Brown actress Candice Bergen’s A Fine Romance explores her life as a movie and television star. A reviewer for the Daily Beast described the book, which also covers topics such as love, childbirth and, naturally, weight gain, “might be labeled Chick Lit, [but] not in any derogatory way.” Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew’s Born with Teeth tells the true story of Ms. Mulgrew’s giving up a baby for adoption, a genuine confession rather than a fake red carpet-style “opening up.”
While the celebrity memoir genre is selling well now, it hasn’t always been a goldmine for publishers. In 1997, much-hyped memoirs by Whoopi Goldberg and Jay Leno lost money. Writer Laurence Kirschbaum theorized in a New York Times story that celebrity books had ”dwindled in popularity because the tabloidization of the country has stolen much of the explosive content of the books.” He could not have gotten it more wrong. Almost twenty years later, the opposite has happened: the celebrity memoir, far from having been displaced by what Kirschbaum called “the tabloid experience,” is merely an extension of that experience. It is reality TV between covers. The supposedly shocking revelations in these memoirs are merely a calculated effort by celebrities to maintain their personal brand.
And we are the ones buying the goods. What does it say about us that we are such eager consumers of these celebrity manipulations? We like to think we know and understand the “real” person behind the façade of celebrity, of course, but in the end there is little virtue in reading their stories unless we do so with a healthy dose of skepticism and the knowledge that what we’re enjoying is closer to entertaining fiction than fact.
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