Free PDF The Fame Lunches: On Wounded Icons, Money, Sex, the Brontës, and the Importance of Handbags, by Daphne Merkin
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The Fame Lunches: On Wounded Icons, Money, Sex, the Brontës, and the Importance of Handbags, by Daphne Merkin
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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.
- Sales Rank: #807802 in Books
- Brand: Merkin, Daphne
- Published on: 2014-09-02
- Released on: 2014-09-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.24" h x 1.36" w x 6.22" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 416 pages
Review
“Precise, pointed. . . . Together, these essays . . . showcase a fearless intelligence. . . . Merkin addresses more complicated issues, or at least ones calling for either honest self-examination or subtlety. . . . These are stunning works, enough to hold us for at least another decade.” ―Clea Simon, The Boston Globe
“[Merkin] writes like an angel, whatever the subject.” ―Editor's Choice, Buffalo News
“Unfailingly intelligent.” ―Heller McAlprin, NPR
“Outstanding . . . one of our best narrative nonfiction writers. Merkin's voice is secular and modern and yet filled with some sort of ancient wisdom, and coupled with intellectual and emotional honesty, while maintaining a pureness of heart. That is no easy feat.” ―Elaine Margolin, Jewish Journal
“A diverse array of work . . . The keenly perceptive Merkin adroitly tackles high and low culture . . . refreshingly candid . . . . No matter what topic, readers will be treated to mesmerizing prose, lively wit, and penetrating analysis; the collection is a joy to read.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)
“An eclectic collection of pieces, all of which feature her unique style and voice . . . . Merkin's style is inevitably exploratory--these are ‘essays' in the word's literal sense. Like Montaigne, she writes to figure something out, not because she's already figured it out . . . Essays that go down like candy but nourish like health food.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Fearless, impolitic, honest, darkly observant, these superb essays tell all of our secrets.” ―Katie Roiphe
“Daphne Merkin is one of the smartest and best readers I know--not only of books (about which she writes peerlessly) but of people and their preoccupations. She is fiercely honest, even when she turns her unflinching eye on herself, and has such range and such an uncanny ability to draw connections that her essays leave you enlightened about things you never knew you cared about.” ―Chip McGrath
“Daphne Merkin's voice is unmistakable in its wit and audacity and undertone of melancholy. The essay form is a perfect medium for her delicious arias.” ―Janet Malcolm
“Daphne Merkin puts the mark of her distinctive style--intellectual and literary--on everything she writes about, from Kabbalah to camp. This is the juiciest collection of cultural criticism to come along in quite a while and establishes her as a unique and major essayist.” ―Phyllis Rose
“The Fame Lunches is nothing short of a great read. It's filled with unexpected insights into the Complexity, Sorrow, and Beauty of my favorite subject: Women. Everything Daphne Merkin touches glows in the light of her shining talent.” ―Diane Keaton
“Daphne Merkin's sparkling and unreasonably informed essays are about fame, yes, and lunches, somewhat. Above all, they are strikingly original takes on the human condition.” ―Woody Allen
“The Fame Lunches is a delicious and delightful feast. What a pleasure to read a writer who can use language with joy and inventiveness. Daphne Merkin has taken the essay form back to its roots in Michel Montaigne, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Samuel Johnson. Her range is vast, her intellect inspiring. Whether you agree with her conclusions or not, watching her mind work is a thing of beauty.” ―Erica Jong, author of Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life
“Everything Daphne Merkin writes is so smart, it shines.” ―The Washington Post Book World on Daphne Merkin
“One of the few contemporary essayists who have (and deserve) a following.” ―New York Magazine on Daphne Merkin
About the Author
Daphne Merkin, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, is a regular contributor to ELLE. Her writing frequently appears in The New York Times, Bookforum, Departures, Travel + Leisure, W, Vogue, and other publications. Merkin has taught writing at the 92nd Street Y, Marymount, and Hunter College. Her previous books include Enchantment, a novel, and Dreaming of Hitler, a collection of essays. She lives in New York City.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
it is nice to have them
By Lucubrator
It's been a long time since her last collection. While I've read a number of the essays gathered in this book in several magazines, it is nice to have them, and the ones that got away, in a beautiful hardbound collection. Personally, I love Ms. Merkin's voice--incisive, intelligent, empathetic, self-scrutinizing, and gently mocking. Her range of literary, historical, and psychological knowledge is wide and subtlety conveyed. I find reading her pieces like being in the company of smart, funny, and generous friend. Really enjoyed her profiles of Alice Munro and Diane Keaton, as well as her unflinching and honest takes on money and fame.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
She's the queen of oversharing --- and that's good news for her readers.
By Jesse Kornbluth
Daphne Merkin is frighteningly intelligent. You only have to read a few paragraphs of her writing to know that she’s read, heard and seen everything written, recorded and filmed, and that, for good measure, she has a point of view about her subject that is dramatically different from every other writer. But Daphne Merkin is not only deeply smart, she is deeply troubled. She’s the queen of Too Much Information, though in her case the oversharing is the point.
She was, she tells us, born into a family of casually Orthodox Jews. They Merkins were rich — they lived in a Park Avenue duplex, they had a house staff — but money somehow didn’t seem plentiful. Her father was successful and distant. She could never get close to her mother; young Daphne had a “sense of not having been loved — or, to put it more precisely, responded to in a way that felt like love.” At 5, she began “to be apprehensive about what lay in wait for me.” At 8, she was “wholly unwilling to attend school, out of some combination of fear and separation anxiety.”
But she could write. Lord, could she write. When she was 21, she reviewed a book by Jane Bowles. Woody Allen wrote her a fan letter: “You’re wasting your gifts on reviewing.” They became friends. Many years later, over lunch, she told him she felt more depressed than usual. With that, as she writes in this collection of pieces, the interrogation began:
"How depressed? he immediately wanted to know. Quite depressed, I said. Did I have trouble getting up in the morning? Lots, I answered. Did I ever stay in bed all day? No, I said, but it was often noon before I got out of my nightgown. But of course I continued to write, he said. I answered that I hadn’t written a word in weeks. He looked quite serious and then gently asked me if I had ever thought about trying shock therapy. Shock therapy? Yes, he said, he knew a friend — a famous friend — for whom it had been quite helpful. Maybe I should try it.
Sure, I said. Thanks. I don’t know what I had been hoping for — some version of come with me and I will cuddle you until your sadness goes away, not go get yourself hooked up to electrodes, baby — but I was slightly stunned. More than slightly. I understood that he was trying to be helpful in his way, but it fell so far short. We shook hands on Madison Avenue and then gave each other a polite peck, as we always did. It was sunny and cool as I made my way home, looking in at the windows full of bright summer dresses. Shock therapy? It wasn’t as though I hadn’t heard of it or didn’t know people who had benefited from it. Still, how on earth did he conceive of me? As a chronic mental patient, someone who was meant to sit on a thin hospital mattress and stare grayly into space? Didn’t he know I was a writer with a future, a person given to creative descriptions of her own moods? Shock therapy, indeed; I’d sooner try a spa.
It suddenly occurred to me, as I walked up Madison Avenue, that it might pay to be resilient, if this was all being vulnerable and skinless got you. People didn’t stop and cluck over the damage done unless you made it worth their while. Indeed, maybe it was time to rethink this whole salvation business. Or maybe I was less desperate, less teetering on the edge, than I cared to admit. Now, that was a refreshing possibility."
Now that I’ve suggested the psychological terrain — and these are just the top notes, expressed as vulgar journalism — what about “The Fame Lunches: On Wounded Icons, Money, Sex, the Brontës, and the Importance of Handbags,” Daphne Merkin’s new collection of essays? There are 45 of them, and the topics are, as they say, wide-ranging.
Merkin is extremely conscious of surface appearance, especially her weight, so there’s an essay called “In My Head I’m Always Thin.” “Our Money, Ourselves” tracks her family’s public philanthropy and private tightness: “At some point I took to muttering darkly to my mother that charity began at home, but she would always fix me with a contemptuous look and ask, ‘And what exactly is it that you lack?’ She managed to make me feel ungrateful and grabby at once.”
There are meditations on stars, most of them damaged icons ripe for her healing analysis — Marilyn, Michael, Truman, Courtney. Her take on Princess Diana’s marriage will suggest the tone: “I find myself wondering how Diana’s life might have turned out if she and Charles had bonded over their shared lack of childhood, their virtual abandonment as children. …What would have happened if they had the patience (on his side) and endurance (on hers) to address their mutual longings for love and nurturance in each other?”
There are book reviews, many of them learned, some of them esoteric. Zingers appear — on John Updike: “He began to seem like a man who always wore a hat to work.” — but the general reader may feel lost. No problem. This isn’t a book you read cover-to-cover in an evening. It’s a book you dip into, reading what you like, skipping what doesn’t appeal.
Tina Brown told Daphne Merkin, “The art of self-exposure is not simply catharsis.” True, especially for Daphne Merkin. I know her just well enough to believe she found only modest catharsis in writing these pieces. She’s after something bigger, smarter, grander. And in her endless distress, she often finds it.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A great collection
By 20thCenturyLtd
Merkin has perfect pitch as an observer. A great collection, in the spirit of Mary MCarthy, Dorothy Parker, and Janet Flanner.
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