The Fame Lunches
On Wounded Icons, Money, Sex, the Brontës, and the Importance of Handbags
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A wide-ranging collection of essays by one of America's most perceptive critics of popular and literary culture
From one of America's most insightful and independent-minded critics comes a remarkable new collection of essays, her first in more than fifteen years. Daphne Merkin brings her signature combination of wit, candor, and penetrating intelligence to a wide array of subjects that touch on every aspect of contemporary culture, from the high calling of the literary life to the poignant underside of celebrity to our collective fixation on fame. "Sometimes it seems to me that the private life no longer suffices for many of us," she writes, "that if we are not observed by others doing glamorous things, we might as well not exist."
Merkin's elegant, widely admired profiles go beneath the glossy façades of neon-lit personalities to consider their vulnerabilities and demons, as well as their enduring hold on us. As her title essay explains, she writes in order "to save myself through saving wounded icons . . . Famous people . . . who required my intervention on their behalf because only I understood the desolation that drove them." Here one will encounter a gallery of complex, unforgettable women—Marilyn Monroe, Courtney Love, Diane Keaton, and Cate Blanchett, among others—as well as such intriguing male figures as Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, Truman Capote, and Richard Burton. Merkin reflects with empathy and discernment on what makes them run—and what makes them stumble.
Drawing upon her many years as a book critic, Merkin also offers reflections on writers as varied as Jean Rhys, W. G. Sebald, John Updike, and Alice Munro. She considers the vexed legacy of feminism after Betty Friedan, Bruno Bettelheim's tarnished reputation as a healer, and the reenvisioning of Freud by the elusive Adam Phillips.
Most of all, though, Merkin is a writer who is not afraid to implicate herself as a participant in our consumerist and overstimulated culture. Whether ruminating upon the subtext of lip gloss, detailing the vicissitudes of a pre–Yom Kippur pedicure, or arguing against our obsession with household pets, Merkin helps makes sense of our collective impulses. From a brazenly honest and deeply empathic observer, The Fame Lunches shines a light on truths we often prefer to keep veiled—and in doing so opens up the conversation for all of us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For her first essay collection in more than 15 years, noted literary and cultural critic Merkin (Dreaming of Hitler: Passions and Provocations) assembles a diverse array of work, most of it previously published. Included are profiles of Richard Burton, Bruno Bettelheim, Mike Tyson, and Cate Blanchett, as well as essays on Anne Carson's "unclassifiable" poetry, the books of W.G. Sebald, and the resiliency of Jean Rhys (who "speaks to the inner bag lady in all of us"). The keenly perceptive Merkin adroitly tackles high and low culture the troubled trajectory of the women's movement and the meaning of lip gloss, the fabled Bloomsbury Circle and the "current prima-donna status" of pets. Drawn to "fragile sorts" because she "understood the desolation that drove them," her critiques and profiles pinpoint her subjects' foibles while remaining deeply empathetic. Sensitive to how hard it is to keep one's bearings in our unmoored, consumerist society, she is refreshingly candid about her anxieties, writing of her family's "pathological discretion" on the subject of its wealth, her ambivalence about her Orthodox Jewish upbringing, and her quest for the perfect handbag. No matter what topic, readers will be treated to mesmerizing prose, lively wit, and penetrating analysis; the collection is a joy to read.