Customer Reviews

Massive Swelling

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Why do I dig this book? It's because the names "Joey McIntyre" of the New Kids and "Mark E. Smith" of The Fall were but pages apart. I could only imagine the hapless aging New Kid (McIntyre) cowering in terror at the sight of a wizened Mancunian bloke (Smith) shambling towards him and murmuring some bollocks about co-optation by the media.
Seriously, Mark E. Smith as described by Ms. Wilson, is a sorry portrait. It reminded me of the day I fell out of love with a local hero celebrity of mine: Mark Ashwill of the Spitters. Ashwill and his band were so engergetic in their prime that I always went to a show just to be in their "halo." I expected every show to be an epiphanous "life-changing" experience. The last time I saw their flailing frames on stage, it was just that: life-changing. It just wasn't the epiphany I expected.
This last show I saw was at the Continental, on 3rd Av. and St. Mark's in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The other three original Spitters - besides Mark - were absent. Whether they were dismissed or they departed on their own, I'll never know. In thier place were a bassist and a drummer: Both young, skinny and nervous. They visibly reared away as Ashwill careened about: replicating his old physical shtick for the umpteenth time. They couldn't complete a single song. Ashwill would bark and rant, hurl his mic stand at the crowd (Punk RAWK, dude... ungh.) He slammed into the drum kit and bellowed, "EVERYTHING'S BREAKING! EVERYTHING'S BREAKING!" He continued howling that phrase even after he tore the XLR cable out of the mic. Towards the end, he met the crowds stare with a hang-dog expression that asked: This isn't even fun for you, is it? I looked to my left and my right and we all had the same sad mask, as if to say: Just end this.
The Spitters shambled off the stage with no applause, cheering, jeering or hisses. Only a wash of feedback to announce the show was over. Canned music came over the PA as some of the crowd wandered to the bar and others stepped out into the night. None of us had anything positive or negative to say about the show. None of us said a word, but it was clear we were heart broken.
That show was the last time I went down to the Village for pleasure or excitement. I'm not gonna be pretentioius and say rock died that day, but that was definitely the day I fell out of love with it.
Three years later, Mark Ashwill died of lung cancer. I was completely unaware of his condition until I read an obituary for him in the Village Voice. Rock music lost all its glamour for me long before his death, that night at the Continental. I still think it's fun, but I no longer wish to bask in any celebrity halo: Whether it's a Local Hero or an International Superstar.

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.

In the world of super-hype and fame worship, in a time when all you have to do to prove yourself 'worthy' is to become famous sounds a voice of reason. That voice belongs to Cintra Wilson. Her book is a biting, honest, hilarious and overall amazing look at what the culture of fame has done to us as a society. From the seemingly innocent to the downright scary, all aspects of the need for fame and fortune is brought to light.
Cintra has no fear of stepping on toes or calling things what they really are. This is a great book for anyone who wants to see beyond the marketing and understand what the world of Hollywood is really all about.

"Celebrity is a virulent killer of fundamental human values, and unless Southern California goes up in a shiny moshroom cloud on Judgement Day, the only way to control it is to quit believing in it...
We must stop believing that famous people are better and more beautiful and interesting than other people. They're not. They're just like other human beings, only advertised, massively into major leading brands, like dog food or shaving cream."

-Cintra Wilson

Surprisingly witty and hilarious. A must read.

I want to think that this book had more impact when it was published a whole 3 years ago. I found the experience of reading it to be painful after the first few pages of the author's wheel-spinning on the same old anti-celebrity diatribe. I know that cutting down the rich and famous is not touted as original by this author, but I was disappointed that her writing did not fulfill the promise of originalty. It reads like one of the more interesting college-fresman 'zines available in coffee houses, not like what I'd expect from such a widely distributed and praised book.

This book keep me laughing from start to finish. I found Ms. Wilson's writing style to be easy to read and visual.
Wish that she would write another book.

Cintra Wilson is a hilarious writer. There's no doubt about it. She takes on her topic with scathing snark. She is apoplectic about the celebrity culture that has consumed America, but she does too much finger pointing (her middle one) and not enough analysis of the reasons why save impugning the "maladjusted, bacon-eating" rural and suburban population that isn't as erudite as her and her cocktail set, which she loathes as well. Also missing is an alternative aside from Stop, and Don't watch, don't look anymore, Stop feeding the monster with your infatuation. And too often she comes off as an ersatz Camille Paglia and as someone incapable of dealing with what David Foster Wallace calls "the hazards of freedom". For someone who proclaims to be ultra-liberal and Green-blooded Ms. Wilson is one of the most intolerant people I've ever read, yet I did laugh with her, and after reflecting what I read I laugh at her and her misery. But, hey, she has to be applauded for voicing her opinion that Napalm be dropped on Los Angeles. I second that.

I give the book three out of five stars because of the easy reading, not for the quality of the material. Although Wilson does prove to be a gutsy gal the content was quite disappointing. So much name dropping and not very many [deep] cultural observations. Most of the observations were just stating the obvious.
I would recommend this to a teenage girl with an eating disorder.

Cindra Wilson hates Celine Dion and the New Kids on the Block. Gee, she sure has carved out a unique niche. Her utterly mundane worldview would be at least mildly entertaining if she could write. But here's a typical passage:
"As you can see, the deep, widespread, and dangerous hysteria a seemingly inconsequential boy band can spread is absolutely staggering, and all the more depressing since the driving push behind the whole teen music deal is groteque wealth."
Driving push? Teen music deal? This isn't an isolated example. This is how she writes. Some reviewers have compared her to Dorothy Parker. As a writer, she more closely resembles Parker Stevenson. Or as Wilson herself might put it: the writing stuff in this book like thing kind of [is not good].

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 written on fame, celebrity, and the perversions of both (they ARE different - "fame" is earned, like Julius Caesar's; "celebrity" is simply the fact of being celebrated while generally otherwise lacking merit, like the 9 American Idol losers). I couldn't bring myself to do such a thing to a book that, and writer who, so completely transported, entertained, and enlightened me - with an average belly-laugh a page. Mencken assumed room temperature half-a-hundred years ago, but the Menckenesque debunking spirit lives on in Cintra Wilson. Thank god.