The Fame Lunches: On Sadness, Writing, the Promise of Fame, and Other Imperfections

by Daphne Merkin

Whether her topic is psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century, Tom Stoppard’s heady plays, the semiotics of lip gloss, or the deadly seductiveness of fame, Daphne Merkin’s infectious warmth and curiosity have made her unique, even among masters of the modern essay. In The Fame Lunches, many of her most celebrated essays from The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Elle, Vogue, and other magazines are brought together in a single shimmering collection. An indispensible book for anyone who loves a good sentence.  

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, History, Writing, Short Stories, Psychology, Celebrity

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2013

Reviews

[Calli · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a mixed bag for me. It started strong (Merkin is amazing at pulling some relatable humanity and vulnerability out of celebrities), but I felt like parts of it (especially the musings on handbags or manicures or...really any non-human subjects) were so prone to self-absorbed navel-gazing that it almost made me dislike her. It's hard, because there is a very fine line between being vulnerable and being narcissistic and I feel like she dances back and forth over that line a little too much. It got to the point where I wanted to yell at her, "not EVERYTHING is about you!"

Basically, the book started strong and petered out quickly for me. Perhaps she is good in small doses or only when talking about other people.

One HUGE aside: her pieces on famous people are very insightful and give great perspective, but they are all hugely biased by her own opinion and how she sees herself reflected in them. For example (and I realize this issue is of particular importance to me), her piece on Woody Allen was actually difficult for me to read. She was writing an analysis of the person, not the work, and to do that without at all addressing his relationship with his step-daughter (the one he married after sleeping with her underage, not the one he allegedly raped as a child) seems like such intentional avoidance of anything that reflects badly on a man that was nice to her as a young person. It's like she believes it's more important that he be sympathetic so his praise to her means more than to address a truly serious issue regarding the kind of person he is. I don't think the whole of who he is is defined by this relationship, but it's significant and ignoring it just seemed self-serving, in a way. It didn't fit with the image of him she wanted to project, so she ignored it.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

What everyone accused Jonathan Franzen of with Freedom- privileged narcissism that took on a heavily biased self righteous tone that his excellent writing abilities could not balance- I found Merkin guilty of here.
Who can analyze Woody Allen without mentioning his scandals? Who can write a series of articles $1300 skin cream without feeling like she is alienating most of her audience? How hopelessly out of touch does a person have to be to muse repeatedly over their teeth, their figures, nails, etc, name dropping famous friends and designer brands along the way? An ex described her as 'lost in a jungle of narcissism' and I'm inclined to agree, perhaps while adding 'and lost in an ocean of unselfawareness.'

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The articles themselves are decently written, but it is a collection of magazine articles the author has written in the past. It's hard to read more than one of these in a stretch. Making it into a book, I am not sure, was necessary.

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. Most of the essays felt very outdated and written for a very specific audience-which seems to exclude anyone west of NYC. The section on authors was by far the most interesting, the personal essays the least. We all have limited personal reading time-don't waste it with this one.

[Michelle Meier · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Daphne Merkin. I'll read anything she's written.

[Coleen (The Book Ramblings) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daphne Merkin is an author that I never heard of before, so I was interested in reading this book, and learning a bit more about her. The author is a former writer for The New Yorker, and she is a regular contributor to Elle magazine. Her previous publications include Enchantment, a novel, and Dreaming of Hitler, a collection of essays. I thought this was a great collection of essays on a wide range of topics, whether informative, or just an intriguing read. This actually happened to be the book that I carried with me throughout the week, so I could read an essay or two whenever I had the time. There were a few essays that didn’t hold my interest, but I think that people will find the variety in this collection to be enough that a selected few won’t matter when it comes to the overall book. Merkin’s wit, smarts, and fearlessness was showcased in her writing, and it made me think of sitting down with a friend over a cup of coffee with good and honest conversation. I enjoyed it, so I am going to be passing the book onto my mother so she can read it, and I will checking out Daphne Merkin’s other books, too.

[Pam Cipkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of this woman--an essayist who has written for The New Yorker and is a regular contributor to Elle magazine. But her essays sounded provacative and interesting. Many of the essays were just that--I especially enjoyed those on the Brontë sisters and Betty Friedan. But others, like the one on Bruno Bettelheim, drew me flat. Still, I always enjoy being enlightened by that which I do not know, and Merkin is a very compelling writer, so I wouldn't hesitate to give this one a positive recommendation.

[Ellen Pilch · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this book at all. I found it very offensive that in one essay she is complaining of how people spend a fortune on buying their pets things. In another essay, she is writing about designer shoes and purses. As a pet lover, I think spending money on my pets which are living creatures is a lot better than making designers richer by purchasing their overpriced accessories. This author just rubs me the wrong way.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when an interviewer writes more about themselves than the subject. Who is the celebrity? When Chuck Klosterman does it, it ties into the topic. There's a connection. Not with these essays. I skimmed about half but the ones I did read, I learned nothing that had not been reported, more in depth, elsewhere.

[False · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read these essays in the recent past, as well as other of her work. Interviews or reflective essays on culture and the famous. One of the most insightful pieces she wrote was about Diane Keaton. Never buy in to the ditzy la dee dah persona. There is always a driven steel core to get to that level of fame.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diverse group of essays/reviews previously published in periodicals on diverse topics from the Brontes to the modern interest in Kabbalah. Her tone is concersational and she always has an interesting viewpoint.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recommended by the Head Butler. I did not finish all the essays. Read some of them - they were o.k. The one about Sandra Dee was very sad - I didn't realize how sad her life was. A lot were of no interest to me. Maybe I just don't like books of essays ;-)

[Whitney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truly interested in maybe half of the essays in here. The rest I skimmed. Very much yes to Brontes and Plath and Bloomsbury and did Courtney kill Kurt? Very meh to the handbags etc.

[Emily M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting take on life, by an old-time pro.

[Sruti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most articles in the collection were interesting or informative, but some of them were just uselessly indulgent.

[Alexis Popik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Daphne Merkin is funny, smart and has wide-ranging knowledge that make every essay/review well worth reading. I bought this book for friends at Christmas.

[The Jewish Book Council]

Review by Maron L. Waxman for the Jewish Book Council.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a big, chewy read. I adored most of the essays, although a few were over my head. If yo uare wanting to loose yourself in good but heavy writing, this is your book.

[Arren Lenau · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read one essay in this collection because I became obsessed with Nuala O’Fualain and she had written an essay about her. It was great! But I didn’t want to read anything else.

[Maria Espinosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

To read Daphne Merkin's essays in this collection is like listening in on a fascinating, literate, amusing, and also erudite conversation. I found myself reading--and then wanting to reread--various essays for pure enjoyment. She does not stint on personal details (handbags, makeovers) but then goes on to incisive, brilliant comments on writers/ artists...writers/ --from Marilyn Monroe to Matthew Arnold to architects ..nothing is beyond her view.

[Gail Kennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

funny and intelligent observations on a wide variety of topics. a new favorite essayist for me.

[Jim Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Merkin is articulate, witty, and insightful. What more can you expect from an essayist. Daphne, more please!

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am working my way through all her books. This one is my favorite so far!

[angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The truth is I’ve been something of a bifurcated, high/low girl from the very start," Merkin prefaces her collection of celebrity profiles and essays on fame and material culture, “someone as intrigued by the seemingly superficial as by the culturally momentous.” What I love about Merkin’s writing is how her voice permeates throughout with an earnestness, in how she approaches both matters of glamour and mundanity with a candid openness to change and revision.

This is reflected also in the people and topics she seeks out to examine, individuals who are similarly “characterized by a certain porousness – an unfiltered receptivity to the comings and goings of the zeitgeist”, those who “retained a certain plasticity of temperament throughout this life, a receptivity to the imprinting of new experience”. I happen to share a fondness for those such characters as well, and found her measured critiques and digressions into the pervasive nature and cannibalistic byproducts of fame and public persona, particularly in her celebrity profiles, to be trenchant and astute.

We will never have enough of Monroe, in part because there is never sufficient explanation for the commotions of her soul, and in part because we will never tire of hearing about the native sadness behind the construction of glamour.

Merkin draws an insightful, skilled eye to the inner lives of celebrities juxtaposed against the public personas they are so often if not always, at odds with, and the public’s “obsession with celebrity and the ways in which celebrity affects, for better or worse, those within its halo, as well as those outside it”. I picked up Merkin’s book in interest of gaining further perspective into the ways these same ideas of fame have affected how we have become our own ‘microcelebrities’ in our spheres, particularly through social media – by the access such mediums grant us in broadcasting the little stories of our daily lives as if they were of grand importance and care – through the nature of pursuing fame in a digital and consequently more accessible and pervasive manner, packaged as a shortcut for connection and quick fix for loneliness: “This may be a too reductive - or simply, general - way of putting it, but what I know for sure is that our consciousness of fame has changed the equation by which we measure our lives and validate our actions.”

Of course, a great part of the allure of reading biographies lies in this very discrepancy between image and reality.

The gist might be the same: the paradoxical, unfulfilling yet ever-captivating desire for ‘fame’, for the chance for one’s work or art to be seen, and to be affirmed of it; and the familiar questions surrounding this, what the constructing and upholding of an alter-persona, whether in digital or daily life, confers for the individual at the heart of it. Merkin, of course, explores a wide range of interests and ideas beyond these themes, and after completing it, I was left with many bookmarked passages and wonderful insight into these many different lives and worlds to return to.

Some might find Merkin’s digressions on especially her own experiences and understanding of wealth and material possessions to be verging on niche and solipsistic – but I read it as a purposeful self-reflection exploring her honest denials and uncertain justifications to explain how things are the way that they are. Our thoughts in these topics especially are rarely linear and clear-cut, not to mention that public discussion of them is rarely candid in this sort of way, and Merkin’s willing attempts at interrogating these wayward, circular thoughts, in expanding her own experiences and uncertainties to a greater symbolic meaning, allows us a chance to comprehend them in a new way, and through those “inner nods of recognition”, find useful lessons within our own experiences.

All of us long to be at home in the world, to find our singular passions reflected in a larger pond than the selves we swim in.

[Lorri Steinbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. it's low highbrow or high lowbrow and that's my favorite kind of writer, one who can freely try to puzzle out Courtney Love and tackle Lytton Strachey all in the same volume.