Katie Andre And Patronising Her Crystal Jordans
ALWAYS a bit sad whn the sensible, thoughtful writers get hold of celebrity culture. It says more about the writer than the target. They like to analyse it:
“Belle turned on Crystal: ‘F*** off, I’m a size 6.’ Crystal sighed. She couldn’t be bothered arguing with Belle, who was definitely a size 8.”
Carol Midgley
You get the idea. We’re talking girl bands, The X-Factor, sex, breast size, designer clothes – the preoccupations of modern youth. It only struck me just how much She of the Helium Balloon Breasts is dominating British mores when I popped into W H Smith and saw Crystal displayed next to Alastair Campbell’s The Blair Years. It was flying off the shelves – Jordan’s more than Alastair’s. Naturally, I joined the queue. Well, they’d knocked £2 off and who could resist a “glittering and sexy story of passion and betrayal and one woman’s search for true love” for £7.99? It is, I can confirm, thrillingly awful.So why am I writing about it? Well, if you want to talk about in-vogue, contemporary literature I’m afraid this is a big part of the story. Celebrity fiction is booming. Naomi Campbell, Pamela Anderson, Ivana Trump, Nicole Richie – they can all add “novelist” to their CVs now. Their books may be fist-chewingly bad but usually they outsell those on the Booker shortlist several times over. And the customers are the very people who gorge on celebrity magazines and usually couldn’t be persuaded to open a novel if you threatened to clout them over the head with it.
The Times’s Carol Midgley only bought it because it was cheap (and not becasue she needed something to write about). You can get War and Peace for a quid…
Posted: 19th, July 2007 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
