“I’ve been making up bedtime stories for my children and suddenly I’ve had a brainwave. These stories are good! These stories are brilliant! I would be failing in my moral duty to my adoring public if I did not put them down on paper.”
If my theory holds true, it is scary, because it suggests that celebrities believe the hype about their own abilities. Worse, it implies a depth of public obsession about the famous that is even more extreme than we realise. It is one thing to want to know which celebrity is sleeping with which, who has fallen out with whom, the stuff and nonsense of tabloid prurience. But to want to listen in to the most intimate bedtime stories told by a celebrity to her or his child, irrespective of their worth, is bordering on the weird. —Ed Pilkington —Once upon a time (Guardian)
Dear celebrities:
Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
Sincerely,
A parent.
P.S. John Lithgow, I’ll make an exception for you. Your kid books are pretty good, but you earned kid-cred by doing kid shows and a few CDs of kid songs. Farkle McBride and Marsupial Sue are OK with me. Oh, and that one about a mouse that paints pictures.
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Will, part of the point of the article is that these celebrities aren't terribly good authors. Madonna's introduction to her latest book is incredibly smug and obnoxious. The attention given to celebrity authors takes away from the time the news media and literary journalism can devote to professional authors (whose careers depend on putting books into the hands of book buyers).
I'm certainly not interested in censoring celebrity authors, or in insisting that they don't have the right to try to break into another field. I even noted that John Lithgow has worked hard to establish an alternate career as a children's performer... Madonna's project seems like a vanity thing.
And by the way, my wife decided that she should date me even before she met me (when someone at a social gathering told her, "There's this guy you should meet,") and on our first date, when my wife told me what our first-born child should be named, something inside me went "Okay." (She insists that she said "what your first-born son should be named," but I responded to what I thought I heard.)
I haven't had the experience of a failed business venture, and as an English grad student who finished my Ph.D., landed a tenure-track job before finishing my Ph.D., and then managed to find another tenure-track job that I like better, I admit I've had a bit of a charmed life.
None of that makes me want to buy Madonna's latest children's book. But if someone else thinks it's great, they're welcome to tell the world about it on their blog.
To be blunt, I'm to busy to read the whole article, but the quote in your entry is what I don't like.
People like to think that everything that's successful is completely planned out, because it makes them feel better and in more control. In reality, I'm certainly finding that a certain optimistism and allowed ignorance really push things forward.
What is it - 8 out of 10 restaurants that are started fail? You can bet most of those in the "8" group thought they had a great idea to. And you can bet that most of those in the "2" group also thought the same thing.
How many times have you heard "I made this great accomplishment, but if I had known how much work it would be when I started, I don't think I ever would have done it!"
When you went to talk to a girl, for the first time, who you eventually married, did you say to yourself "I know this is the girl I'm going to marry."...if you did, how many times before that did you say the same thing and it didn't happen?
How many times did the thing you worked on and thought would be great not get well received, but something else that you didn't think would go over well get rave reviews?
Major accomplishments are often made by being optimistic and half-way nieve about the possibility of failure. Celebrities are just normal people who are famous, and they do the same thing.