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Newspapers publish a rough draft of history, as they say. And what is the rough draft of the news? I would argue that it is gossip, filtered out by good journalists. Which means gossip is a very rough first version of what ends up in the history books. I first thought of this syllogism while reading my primary sources a book of cultural historyand it occurred to me recently as I dove into Lena Dunham’s very entertaining new memoir, Famesick. “God bless the name-dropping memoir—the bolder and more boastful the better,” my colleague Sophie Gilbert wrote this week in an essay about the book. Gilbert also laments that Dunham’s other memoirs fall short of what her ground-breaking is HBO series, girlsmanaged to do: “to make a wider sense out of his experiences”. It’s true that the book can’t compete with the show’s ability to explain itself to members of the generation. And yet, as primary source material on the creation of millennial art, Famesick it’s hard to beat.
First, here are five stories from Atlantic‘s book section:
“For everything that was written about girls during its six seasons—and that was a lot,” writes Gilbert, “nothing has offered the access and insight that Dunham provides in Famesick.” The opening chapters describe Dunham’s artsy, privileged upbringing in Manhattan; her struggle to overcome the challenges – technical, physical and emotional – of filmmaking in her early twenties; and her first encounter with the transactional creatures that run Hollywood and the trolls that run social media. Her material is tightly packed but lightly delivered, her writing funny and vulnerable. But as a memoir, her account is also by definition self-involved—the product of a single perspective. As Dunham’s alter ego, Hannah Horvath, memorably puts it in girls pilot, she is, if not the the voice of her generation, then perhaps “a voice of a generation.”
Hannah’s statement of purpose touches on both the promise and limitations of public figure memoirs. In the hands of a skilled and thoughtful writer (or, in some cases, a ghostwriter), these books can be a powerful distillation of what it was like to live and work at a particular time. Famesick reveals much about how Hollywood operated in the 2010s, how America’s economic and social networks functioned, and how some millennials responded to a range of opportunities and dangers specific to them. Dunham’s gossip about colleagues, friends and enemies is a generational portrait, a feast for cultural historians to come.
Meanwhile, the main limitation of the book is common. This is just a “voice”: one person’s account, colored by calculation, self-justifications and blind spots. However, sometimes these qualities can be the very thing that makes a book attractive. The fun of reading a memoir Cher or Barbra Streisand or (to quote one of my primary sources) Sammy Davis Jr. it comes from the feeling of being embroiled in a gossip session with an unreliable but charismatic narrator. Hang on to every word partly because you don’t always believe them; if you are a journalist or critic, you consult other sources. Reality as we know it consists of subjective experiences, none of which would feel complete on their own. Gilbert writes, “I’m not quite sure what that means Famesick is, except that certain things are entered into the historical record.” Sometimes that’s enough – especially if you can’t stop reading it.
What does Lena Dunham want to tell us?
Sophie Gilbert
Her new memoir chronicles the cost of being an impossibly popular target.
What to read
Party of Twoby Jasmine Guillory
Picking a favorite Guillori book is like picking a favorite cookie. All are sweetly satisfying; it just depends on what flavor you’re in the mood for. You may be interested in fake ruse which turns into true love. Maybe you want two rivals to understand how thin is the line between hate and love. U Party of Two— the fifth novel in a series featuring the same group of friends — the main character, Olivia, must navigate the spotlight that comes with dating a senator without diminishing her ambitions. What makes Guillory’s characters shine is their passion: for their jobs (some, including Olivia, are lawyers, as the author herself once was), for the betterment of their communities, and for the simpler pleasures in life, which here mostly boil down to good food. Olivia and Max meet at the hotel bar, where she enjoys an ice-cold martini with her Caesar salad and fries. They start talking about dessert. Later, he sends a cake to ask her out. The whole book offers a feast for both the heart and the stomach. — Karen Ostergren
From our list: Eight romance novels for romance skeptics
Come out next week
📚 The Rolling Stones: A BiographyBob Spitz
Your weekend reading
What I saw at the Kennedy Center
By Josef Palermo
The day I was released from the Kennedy Center, I felt like Dolly Madison saving Stewart portrait Washington before the British sacked the capital. I was the clerk in charge of the works of art in the building. The key difference is that mine the institution, unlike the White House of 1814, burned for months.
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