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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 lived enough of a life yet. They haven’t lived enough of a life yet to really craft a proper dramatic arc of it. And, honestly, if your life is interesting enough to write a memoir at 98 years old, then don’t bother. Just die and someone will write a biography about you. You will have been that interesting a person.

No, I hate memoirs. I’m going out on a limb here, telling you this, because I have a few close friends who have written memoirs. Good, talented people. I hope they don’t take offense. There are other people who have written memoirs; people whom I don’t know but whom I respect. They may take offense and now never want to meet me because I said I hate memoirs. My friend Marcus mentioned some memoirs he’s read that were good; real literary gems. I haven’t read them. There are a lot of books I haven’t read. So, sure, probably hundreds of these gems exist, memoirs that will blow your mind. I’m sure someone will tell the world all about them, when they leave their critical review for this book online later: “Justine Bateman opens her book with an ignorant rant about the memoir genre.” Something like that. That’s OK.

I talked with a fair amount of book agents before finding the right one to represent me. Almost all of them wanted me to write a memoir, and not the book about Fame. Hey, maybe they thought I had lived a fascinating enough life for that, or maybe they just felt it was an easy sell. The book agent I finally really connected with never mentioned the word “memoir.” He just loved my writing, the subject matter of Fame, and said, “Let’s go.” He’s also Noam Chomsky’s agent. The American intellect and national treasure, Noam Chomsky. If Noam Chomsky’s book agent isn’t interested in this being a memoir, then no one else should be.

Even one of the publishers I met with, a big publisher, who I assumed was fascinated by the Fame subject matter because they had been anxious to set up a meeting, eventually hit me with, “Wouldn’t you rather write a memoir?”

Me, in their office, having just talked about Fame, the sociological theories, my theories, my experience, the experiences of other famous people I’d interviewed. Me, then announcing, “Just so you know, I’m not interested in writing any kind of memoir.” They looked at me, eyebrows raised in that maybe-you-didn’t-mean-that-aren’t-we-still-having-a-good-meeting kind of way. They half blurted out, “Well, don’t look around this room!”

It was only then that I actually did look around the office, and noticed that the shelves were lined with memoirs. You name the person, this company has published their memoir.

“Wouldn’t you rather write a memoir?”

Aw, you too?

What I did get out of that meeting, though, was a completely new direction for the book. Still about Fame (and not a goddamn memoir), but instead of the academic version I had already half-completed, rather a cut-to-the-bone, emotional-river-of-Fame book. (One that my current publisher loves, natch.)