FAME by Justine Bateman.I finished this book a few days ago but it has taken me some time to sit down and write this post, perhaps because the book is a bit confounding and I had a hard time getting a handle on my response. In fact,
FAME is pretty much a hot mess, but in the best way, if that makes any sense. It's partly a memoir of a famous person, although Bateman opens by saying she "fucking hate[s] memoirs". It's partly an analysis of how being famous affects an individual, complete with citations from scholarly sources. It's partly a cultural study of the role fame plays in modern (western, although this is left unspecified) society. And it seems it is partly a visceral, foul-mouthed, vibrant catharsis of a life fraught with challenges that are all artifice but nonetheless real.
All I can say is that I was never bored and Bateman's self-assessment that she became a more interesting person as her "fame temperature" came down is spot on. I'll be reading her next book.
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