Fame. Justine Bateman

      

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

      Published by Akashic Books

       ©2018 Justine Bateman

      ISBN: 978-1-61775-660-3

       Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931219

      Front cover Lombok typeface created by Krea Studio

      First printing

      Akashic Books

       Brooklyn, New York, USA

       Ballydehob, Co. Cork, Ireland

       Twitter: @AkashicBooks

       Facebook: AkashicBooks

       E-mail: [email protected]

       Website: www.akashicbooks.com

       Table of Contents

      ___________________

       Copyright & Credits

       Tornado

       Memoirs

       Sheath

       2000

       Size

       Love

       Anything

       Circle

       Ship

       Not-a-Person

       On

       Letters

       Glove

       Crush

       Spray

       Seesaw

       Difficult

       Carpet

       Ishmael

       Vein

       Acid

       Trauma

       Inadequacy

       Magicians

       Unsafe

       Leper

       Tanya77

       Phone

       Lobster

       Stars

       Pallet

       Real

       Now

       Photographs

       Acknowledgments

       About Justine Bateman

       About Akashic Books

       For all the Seekers, willing to dig

      Tornado

      Hey, you want to go somewhere with me? I’m talking about emotional time travel. You up for it? I want to show you the inside of something, of Fame, and the only way is for me to pull you in there with me. So, it’s me talking. We’re going to go in there and I’m going to tell you how it feels. Sometimes I’m talking to you in this book and sometimes I’m talking to someone who took a shit on me in the press or online. I don’t want you to take it personally. I’m going to trust you, when I pull you into this emotional tornado. I’m going to trust you to know when I’m talking to you and when I’m talking to not-you. To know the difference. To know if I’m talking to a friendly supporter, a person innocently curious about what Fame is like, or if I’m talking to a malicious hater from my own memory. Just be in there with me. Let it toss you about.

      OK. Get in the rowboat and let’s go down the river.

      Memoirs

      I fucking hate memoirs. I’m never going to write one. If you thought this was a memoir, put it back on the shelf, or get a refund, send it back. This isn’t a shitty memoir. This book is about Fame. It’s everything I can remember about being very famous, not so famous, and almost not-famous. It’s about all the theories I’ve drawn about Fame. It’s also about society. Why we do the things we do when we’re face to face with Fame. I hate memoirs because I hate that anybody can write a memoir. You don’t have to have any talent whatsoever as a writer or to have particularly good insights; just put down your life, the things you remember about your life. Everyone’s got one, a life story to tell. You don’t even have to have lived an extraordinary life, just something, anything. You had a pulse for 47 years and then you wrote your “memoir.” And I’m not talking about books about unique experiences like surviving a plane crash in the Alps or having been kidnapped. Those books can be compelling. I’m talking about the expanded-Wikipedia-entry books. First of all, most people under 98 years old have no business writing a memoir. They just haven’t