A New York Times Book Review Notable Book

Daphne Merkin brings her signature combination of wit, candor, and penetrating intelligence to subjects that touch on every aspect of contemporary culture, from the high calling of the literary life to the poignant underside of celebrity and our collective fixation on fame.

Merkin's elegant, widely admired profiles go beneath the glossy facades to consider their vulnerabilities and demons, as well as their enduring hold on us. Here one will encounter a gallery of complex, unforgettable celebrities, from Marilyn Monroe to Mike Tyson, and from Courtney Love to Truman Capote. Merkin also offers reflections on writers as varied as Jean Rhys, W. G. Sebald, John Updike, and Alice Munro. 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.

Introduction: Travels at My Desk

I. STARDUST AND ASHES

The Fame Lunches

Platinum Pain (Marilyn Monroe)

Locked in the Playground (Michael Jackson)

Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Sandra Dee)

The Mystery of Dr. B. (Bruno Bettelheim)

Hunting Diana (Princess Diana)

The Peaceful Pugilist (Mike Tyson)

In Warm Blood (Truman Capote)

Endless Love (Courtney Love)

Days of Brilliant Clarity (Richard Burton)

I I. SKIN- DEEP

Against Lip Gloss or, New Notes on Camp

In My Head I'm Always Thin

The Yom Kippur Pedicure

The Unbearable Obsolescence of Girdles

Brace Yourself

Android Beauty

I I I. OUT OF PRINT

Freud Without Tears (Adam Phillips)

Bloomsbury Becomes Me (Lytton Strachey)

The Loose, Drifting Material of Life (Virginia Woolf)

Moping on the Moors (The Brontë Sisters)

The Lady Vanquished (Jean Rhys)

Last Tango (Anne Carson)

Dust- to- Dustness (W. G. Sebald)

Portrait of the Artist as a Fiasco (Henry Roth)

A Tip of the Hat (John Updike)

IV. HIGHER VALUES

When a Bag Is Not Just a Bag

A Fashionable Mind

Our Money, Ourselves

Let the Fur Fly

Marketing Mysticism

V. WOMEN IN THE SINGULAR

An In de pen dent Woman (Liv Ullmann)

Sleeping Alone (Diane Keaton)

What the Camera Sees in Her (Cate Blanchett)

A Thorny Irish Rose (Nuala O'Faolain)

Illuminating the Ordinary (Alice Munro)

That British Dame (Margaret Drabble)

Sister Act (Betty Friedan)

VI . THE MATING GAME

Life on a Dare (Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald)

On Not Learning to Flirt

Glass House (J. D. Salinger and Joyce Maynard)

So Not a Fag Hag

A Matched Pair (Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath)

The Consolations of Thread Count

Can This Divorce Be Saved?

Brilliant Monsters (V. S. Naipaul)

Do I Own You Now?

Acknowledgments