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Published by Akashic Books
©2018 Justine Bateman
ISBN: 978-1-61775-660-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931219
Front cover Lombok typeface created by Krea Studio
First printing
Akashic Books
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Ballydehob, Co. Cork, Ireland
Twitter: @AkashicBooks
Facebook: AkashicBooks
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.akashicbooks.com
Table of Contents
___________________
For all the Seekers, willing to dig
Tornado
Hey, you want to go somewhere with me? I’m talking about emotional time travel. You up for it? I want to show you the inside of something, of Fame, and the only way is for me to pull you in there with me. So, it’s me talking. We’re going to go in there and I’m going to tell you how it feels. Sometimes I’m talking to you in this book and sometimes I’m talking to someone who took a shit on me in the press or online. I don’t want you to take it personally. I’m going to trust you, when I pull you into this emotional tornado. I’m going to trust you to know when I’m talking to you and when I’m talking to not-you. To know the difference. To know if I’m talking to a friendly supporter, a person innocently curious about what Fame is like, or if I’m talking to a malicious hater from my own memory. Just be in there with me. Let it toss you about.
OK. Get in the rowboat and let’s go down the river.
Memoirs
I fucking hate memoirs. I’m never going to write one. If you thought this was a memoir, put it back on the shelf, or get a refund, send it back. This isn’t a shitty memoir. This book is about Fame. It’s everything I can remember about being very famous, not so famous, and almost not-famous. It’s about all the theories I’ve drawn about Fame. It’s also about society. Why we do the things we do when we’re face to face with Fame. I hate memoirs because I hate that anybody can write a memoir. You don’t have to have any talent whatsoever as a writer or to have particularly good insights; just put down your life, the things you remember about your life. Everyone’s got one, a life story to tell. You don’t even have to have lived an extraordinary life, just something, anything. You had a pulse for 47 years and then you wrote your “memoir.” And I’m not talking about books about unique experiences like surviving a plane crash in the Alps or having been kidnapped. Those books can be compelling. I’m talking about the expanded-Wikipedia-entry books. First of all, most people under 98 years old have no business writing a memoir. They just haven’t