A Massive Swelling

Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations

by Cintra Wilson

Viking, 229 pp., $23.95

Ever found yourself chiding the famous just because, well, they’re famous? If you’ve ever yearned to be noticed on the street or at your local deli, or to have a group of 400 strangers pay — actually pay — for a star heralding your name to be forever pressed into concrete so that millions of other strangers can walk and throw their cigarettes on it, longtime Salon columnist Cintra Wilson arrives just in time with this most visceral antidote. With passages like, “The implication of Fame, in this value-warped society, is: You’ve made it. You and your grand talents are so bright, you are … both physically and spiritually light-years beyond all us bone-sucking hacks,” Wilson asserts herself as an astute and hilarious cultural critic. Not that there aren’t advantages to fame. That, says Wilson, is the kicker. Fame has two überdesirable sidekicks: fun and cash. (To top all injustices off, it seems the amount of cash and amount of fun you have are not always inversely related.) Wilson occasionally picks easy targets for censure: Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Madonna, which leaves you with a “no duh” feeling. But above all, Wilson is a master aritisan who can suck the marrow of meaning out of the bones of a word. She’s gotten down with the little, nonfamous people. And if she’s there, it can’t be all bad.

This article appears in December 22 • 2000.

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