Perhaps it’s due to a collective nostalgia for glory years we did or didn’t experience, a necessary source of escapism in rather grim times, or because we really do want to find out if celebrities are just like us, but recent years have witnessed a boom in celebrity memoirs. Not just celebrities either, but high-profile editors, tycoons and assorted influential people have been putting pen to paper (or their memoirists and ghostwriters have) to capture not only their life and work, but also the culture surrounding them.
For what makes a memoir interesting? Well, for one, it needs to be juicy. We need some tidbits; there must be proximity to celebrity and/or glamour, perhaps a redemption arc and an insight into the world at large through the eyes of said person. The current, well, vogue for books about those high up in the pecking order at publishing behemoth Condé Nast is a case in point. Everybody is talking about When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter, the former long-time editor of Vanity Fair, for precisely these reasons. The days of limitless budgets and town cars are well and truly over for most publishing houses – but oh boy, we really do want to read about when the days really were that good.
Celebrity memoirs worth reading include that of Diane von Furstenberg’s openly gay husband, media tycoon Barry Diller. Photo: AFP
Ultimately, we want to read the truth of someone – without all the edges sawn off – and in reading about someone else we might learn something about ourselves too.
Here are five star-powered memoirs worth the read.
When the Going Was Good – Graydon Carter
When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, by former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. Photo: Handout
For 25 years Graydon Carter was the editor-in-chief of Condé Nast jewel Vanity Fair, right when it was the nerve centre of culture, celebrity, business and scandal. As Carter dishes in this glossy and rather delightful memoir (ghostwritten by journalist James Fox), the going really was good. The best bits are the insights into a very different media landscape (unlimited budgets! Town cars!) and into the big personalities Carter came across, and occasionally sparred with. Donald Trump and Vogue’s Anna Wintour are particularly notable ones. It’s as much an ode to magazines at their most glorious as it is a how-to in living well.
Who Knew – Barry Diller
Who Knew, by Barry Diller, the former CEO of Paramount Pictures who also launched the Fox TV network – and married Diane von Furstenberg. Photo: Handout
Media tycoon Barry Diller has had a singularly interesting career – and life. Among many achievements – such as becoming the CEO of Paramount Pictures when he was 32, and launching the Fox TV network at 44 – Diller married fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg, despite being a gay man. Their 24-year marriage has long been a subject of fascination, and Diller is pleasingly frank in this tale of family, business, the media, Hollywood and his own coming of age, not to mention coming out.
