A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations

It is embarassing how seriously Americans take the culture of celebrity and the media. One of the many reasons we are the world laughing stock. This book is finny, sad and an oh so improtant look at ourselves as Americans and as people. I am a grubby little nobody unfamous person, so I guess this reviwew won't get read anyway.

First reading H.L. Mencken - Prejudices, First Series - way back in grad school, I felt as though I were under rhetorical and ideational assault. Over and over again, ambushed by Mencken's relentless pushing prodding needling stratospheric chthonic ribald mocking joyously playful yet deadly serious language, finding it so jaw-droppingly, startlingly funny that I'd be howling out loud at 2 a.m., waking wife, kids, to whom I'd try to read his inimitable raillery against mountebanks, poltroons, Comstockery, "uplift," and the full panoply of the sins and sinners of his age. Mencken's rhetorical excessiveness, his superabundance of sinuous, surprising, jazz-like prose (he wouldn't have liked that simile) thrilled me, made me want more, made me a devotee for life. And after pondering long and hard, the only writer I can today imagine comparing to Mencken is Cintra Wilson - but as a Mencken on a delirious cocktail of speed, acid, extra bile for a less genteel audience, and pther mystery elixirs that may be swirling through the stream of her imagination. But, my God, this is simply startling, uproarious, deadly accurate journalism. It begins with a brilliance of eye. Wilson sees segments of the spectrum that the rest of us are blind to - great journalism begins in great observation. I would quote, extensively, but I don't want to diminish the pleasures of discovery for any who might pick up this book. Let me simply say that Wilson has a long skewer and, impaled like stacked shishkabob, are a long list of deserving (and deservingly easy) victims, icluding Cher, Bruce Willis, Ike Turner, the dancing-singing-boy groups, and Keanu Reeves; surprising appearances by Jack Nicholson, Jack Palance, and others, and, perhaps most unforgettably (and a most timely inclusion), Michael Jackson and "the nose." And, no, this isn't a simple case of status envy: Wilson's criticisms are deeply rooted in the behavioral characteristics of the studied species, homo celebricanus, which, as we sadly see in the new reality TV rage (American Idol, etc.), might as well be ANY of us, given a few million dollars and a People Magazine cover. A Massive Swelling makes for immediate, even necessary, reading and deserves a new edition with a prefatory essay that pulls the current mass hysteria/idolatry into perspective. But for all Wilson's long, feverish, and spot-on ranting against the disease of celebrity in the United States and the myriads of ways in which is distorts our culture, society, economy, she also bestows. . . praise. This strikes the reader as oddly as would delicate hands on a Cyclops. It is equally hilarious, pinning the recipient of Wilson's encomia to his or her own unique piece of corkboard for detailed scrutiny. I direct the prospective reader to the peerless portrait of King Hell Mick Jagger for a brilliant sample of Wilsonian tribute. I was tempted to dock Wilson a star for being so wholly oblivious to the many, many things other thoughtful commentators have writte

This book was so funny I started reading it last night and finished it this morning, without any sleep between! It's hard to put down. I love all her amusing metaphors and witty nicknames. It's fantastic! Her column is great, too.

Among Cintra Wilson, David Sedaris, and Joe Queenan, I feel my dark heart is finally being channeled and revealed. This book is laugh-aloud funny, spot-on social commentary to scour our smarmy, collective perceptions and foibles cleaner than any upper colonic. It's not for the faint-hearted nor those who wish to remain deluded, but for everyone else it's a relief, like the collective popping of every helium balloon-headed star. She is way too young to be this wise and way too American to be so well-educated and cable of processing her thoughts. And may she continue writing for the rest of the long life she has to live, providing some movie star or the city of LA doesn't put out a hit on her.

Cintra Wilson, a former, longstanding columnist for the "San Francisco Examiner" with a substantial cult following, has produced her first book, a series of satirical essays on celebrities and our cultural obsession with them. Wilson nails down the essential creepiness of true fandom with the inclusion of such artifacts as an entirely genuine boxful of inadvertently deliriously funny fanmail for "New Kids on the Block": the tragically illiterate x-rated writings of desperate, usually suburban, adult women to teenage boys. Her observations appear in chapter-length discussions of Elvis in Vegas; the ever more bizarre persona of Michael Jackson and its psycho-sexual origins; and the LA and New York commonplace of the rabidly, shamelessly ambitious aspiring actor, who defines degradation down in a quest for fame. Wilson argues that celebrity culture is not only toxic to the egos and even physical well-being of celebrities, but also to ordinary folk, ceaselessly encouraged to regard their own lives as inherently shabbier and less important, going undocumented in gossip columns and tabloids. Wilson's rages at celebrity culture are startlingly real, and produce unforgettably, cruelly funny putdowns of figures from divas Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion, to Siegfried & Roy, as the quintessence of the degraded Las Vegas performer. One can only wonder at what private events befell Wilson to produce this magnificent fury at the fame machine, and a wild attack on its cogs and wheels. Easily one of the most uproarious and literate works of pop cultural commentary available. Wilson is a true original.