Trashy Celeb Lit Abounds

On Feb. 8, Anna Nicole Smith died. My relationship with her up to that point had been minimal, but this event took on a bizarre significance for everyone around me as flurries of e-mails went out over house lists.

In the hours after Anna Nicole’s death, I was bombarded with her story by every major news network and I, too, began to care about the buoyant blonde from Texas. All forms of media rushed to fill me in on the trailer-trash tragedy and I was able to devour the details through television, Internet, and magazine at my leisure.

The book world was quick to follow—within the next two months, there will be a reissue of her 1996 biography “Great Big Beautiful Doll” in trade paperback and a release of a second biography “Train Wreck: Anna Nicole Unauthorized.”

Every few years, a new article comes out proclaiming that the book is an endangered species, being pushed out of prominence by the newer media of magazines, television or the Internet. But literature always seems to survive the advent of newer media, partially because it adapts to what readers want. In our fame-obsessed society, that often means books about celebrities.

Though a tabloid can be leafed through inconspicuously at CVS while your boyfriend’s back is turned, a book requires the courage to face the cashier and acknowledge, “Yes, I care enough about Paris Hilton’s life to pay $22.00 for her ghost-written autobiography.” It’s difficult to take a celebrity’s life seriously when it’s printed in the National Enquirer alongside “Leading Experts Charge: Lovelorn Astronaut Intended to Leave Victim BURIED ALIVE or Even kill Her.” Books bestow a certain legitimacy on their subject matter, giving lower-rung celebrities the validation they lack.

Authordom and celebritydom have always had a thriving relationship. It used to be that the literary stars were part of the glittering social elite. Authors like Truman Capote gained access to a whirlwind life of cocktails, beautiful women, and beautiful men because of their writing.

But such a life no longer exists for overweight Southern authors. We now have different standards for our celebrities, and an over-fondness for Krispy Kremes is a dealbreaker.

Today’s author celebrities are famous either because of the immense amounts of money their books have made (Dan Brown) or because they are new, young, and attractive (Marisha Pessl). When books are competing with so many other media sources, good looks and a marketable image are as important as the work you produce.

Rarely do you see an author that can get a deal and remain a hermit. Contracts now come with book signings, public talks, and television appearances as a required part of the package.

It used to be that writing a book made you a celebrity; now, being a celebrity gets you a book deal. Bookstores abound with middling memoirs that made it through publishing houses because of the author’s name recognition.

Of course, some celebrities do write “real” books. Jimmy Carter wrote a novel that, to most reports, wasn’t half bad, though it does have a sex scene (a disturbing thought). A whole bevy of celebrities, from Jodie Foster to Jamie Lee Curtis, have written children’s books.

Not all approve of these celebrity compositions. The MotherReader blog argues for the creation of a new organization called BACA—Bloggers Against Celebrity Authors—pointing out that for every book deal with a celebrity, there’s one less contract given to a new author.

But before we all rush to join BACA, we have to ask ourselves: is the merging of celebrity and literary culture really so bad? Good books have always and will always manage to be published every year, in spite of growing commercialism.

As long as readers willingly consume both good literature and its opposite, celebrity literature, both will survive.

—Staff writer Madeline K.B. Ross can be reached at mross@fas.harvard.edu.