Rounded up from 3.5 stars.

Reading Bateman's "Fame" is like listening to one long, breathless download by a smart and insightful person. This isn't a memoir about being famous, but it still provides a visceral sense of what it's like to be the person standing on the red carpet in front of the cameras -- and what it feels like later on, when the cameras are pointed at the person behind you, not at you.

My favorite takeaway was her observation that fame isn't something a person can control. It's a "sheath" which is "sprayed" on someone by others. And that sheath then influences every single interaction that person has with others, whether they want it to or not.

There's a fair amount of repetition of ideas, which is one of the reasons I didn't rate the book higher. Sometimes the urgent, breathless tone became a bit much ("breathless" as in saying quite a bit before stopping to actually breathe in again, not as in a Marilyn Monroe whisper), but Bateman did succeed in creating a sense of intimacy, of wanting to talk directly to the reader as a friend. So many people are star-struck by fame, yearn for fame, are scornful of fame, but she is one of the few who can describe what's like on the other side, and she urgently wants others to understand how it works. . . because it's not like what most of us imagine. ( )

Seemed to mostly be a rant about how unfair it is that she could not maintain her "fame". Occasionally she would talk with some enthusiasm about the things she's been doing since her fame went away, but overall I think she just wants to be back on top. ( )

I could not relate to this book at all. Bateman seems like an angry person. She ranted on and on and it just didn't keep my attention at all. ( )

I quit reading this book after 100 pages. Instead of an insightful analysis of the consequences of "fame" to me it was a childish rant. The anger flew off of the pages and examples of insults, slights, etc. just didn't measure up to Bateman's tirade. People who become obsessed with celebrities such as the Kardashians might learn something from reading this book but as I have a real life this topic was not one that I could relate to at all. ( )

Fame: The Hijacking of Reality from Justine Bateman both was and was not what I was expecting. I knew it was not simply a tell-all memoir, every blurb made that clear. Yet there were plenty of memoir-ish elements to give it a bit of a memoir feel. I was expecting a fairly straightforward discussion of what fame is and, as the sub-title implies, how it hijacks reality for both the famous and those caught up in worshiping fame from the outside. I did get some of that but it was supplemented by the specifics of how fame affected Bateman. The book took some getting used to and while it could easily have been just a couple hour read I spread it out over a couple days to give it a chance to sink in. Reading a book quickly, especially one that is nonfiction and thus is not simply a story to be gotten through, is not always a positive.

My impression of the book is far more positive than negative. I took her profanity and expressions of how things felt for her to be a glimpse into the personal side of the more negative aspects of fame. During the part of the book where she expressed her emotions openly she generally followed it with how a theorist has or might view the dynamic she had just described. Once I began to look at it within that structure I started to get more from the book. Because of how I think I would have liked a little more theorizing (either her own or others, or both) but I would not have eliminated the open expression of what it felt, and sometimes still feels, like. The combination showed the dynamic between the imposed fame and those affected by it, from fans and acquaintances to those being sprayed with the fame. Were there rants? I don't know that I would call them that, rants usually imply venting with no discernible purpose beyond the pressure relief of venting. Whether the style worked for you or not it did have and served a purpose, so as commonly understood no, I don't consider them rants.

Toward the end of the book there are fewer of the more forceful emotional discussions because in the flow of the overall book we had moved past the chaotic aspect of full blown fame and were dealing with perceiving the differences between fame and accomplishment, between putting the fame away (which is significantly different from having fame taken away, putting it away is more like finishing a book and putting it back on the shelf with only some recollection of what you liked or disliked about it) and dealing with it being constantly measured and reflected back. I did tend to prefer this part of the book but I also think it is because she made the pain and confusion of the chaos of fame so personal that I was happy to be out of the chaos myself.

I would recommend this to readers who are curious about fame beyond just the gossip and headlines. Fame and the culture of fame does not just affect those who are considered famous. Bateman touches on what it does to and says about society as a whole, though the focus is largely on the part with which she is intimately familiar, namely the sudden and all-encompassing fame. While fans of her work will likely enjoy the book I think some may be disappointed that it isn't an actual memoir.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers. ( )