From Slate:
Last week, an acclaimed author published a sequel that further examines the darkest parts of American culture. I’m referring, of course, to Sean Penn’s Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn, the follow-up to his debut novel, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff.
The first Bob Honey was almost universally panned by critics last year, and the follow-up edition is no better, written in ostentatiously alliterative prose that falls somewhere between juvenile tongue-twisting and unhinged rambling: “Catholic catagonia caged poor Annie’s exculpatory rapture, leaving investigators singing psalms.” It includes footnotes explaining obtuse military slang and references to William Golding, making sure we know that Penn understands them but not sullying the actual text with anything resembling clarity. But hey, Salman Rushdie said it was “fun to read” and Paul Theroux called it “comic, cauchemaresque, crackling with life.” Such literary lions wouldn’t steer us wrong, right?
. . . .
Last year saw the publication of novels by David Duchovny and Michael Imperioli, and in 2017, Tom Hanks’ story collection was almost as beloved as Tom Hanks himself. Going back a bit further offers work from James Franco, B.J. Novak, Jesse Eisenberg, and Ethan Hawke. But for the past few years, such A-list wordsmiths have all been dudes. So where are the novels and short stories by famous women?
. . . .
There’s a long history of celebrities, male and female, entering the publishing world to diversify their brands, telegraph that they’re intellectuals, or—more generously—write because they are agnostic in their creative pursuits, though mostly they write nonfiction or children’s titles. There are a handful of exceptions—Amber Tamblyn, Krysten Ritter, and Molly Ringwald have all written novels—but by my count, 40 well-known men (mainly film and TV personalities, but also musicians, sports stars, and political figures) have published books of adult fiction in the past two decades. There have been 19 women who have also done so. It’s worth noting that almost all of these authors are white, and Nicole Richie is the only woman of color.
In today’s literary landscape, famous women are recommending fiction instead of writing it. Members of Emma Watson’s feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf, discuss authors like Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood every two months on Goodreads. Emma Roberts’ Belletrist book club features a different title and independent bookstore on social media every month. Book of the Month Club has a large roster of well-known, predominantly female guest judges, including Gabrielle Union and Constance Wu. Sarah Jessica Parker helms an eponymous imprint at Random House. And Reese Witherspoon—taking the baton from her friend Oprah, the grande dame of book recommendations—picks one book each month to promote, which then gets a Reese’s Book Club designation. Which means that Reese’s and Oprah’s names are on novels, but not as the authors.
In these cases, female celebrities are seen as readers, not writers, consumers, not creators. Women fill the slot in which they’ve historically been placed: supporting and encouraging, rather than competing. Famous women are clearly leading literary lives.
Link to the rest at Slate
PG gently suggests that maybe female celebrities understand they can make much more money doing what made them famous in the first place instead of writing novels.
It also occurred to PG that some of the male celebrities mentioned in the OP probably used ghostwriters. Plus, as far as male celebrities are concerned, PG had to look up Michael Imperioli to discover he was a supporting actor in The Sopranos.
Speaking of “A-list wordsmiths,” PG doesn’t think that James Franco (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), B.J. Novak (Punk’d), Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale), and Ethan Hawke (Assault on Precinct 13) would make it anybody’s A-list unless you were grading on a very generous curve.
A fair number of actresses write novels after they retire, and I sometimes wonder about actresses using pen names. Probably the longest career for an actress-novelist has been Vancouver author and bookshop owner Maureen O’Brien, who had a previous life as a Doctor Who companion and model (and did more work for the Doctor Who audio dramas, and recently got adopted by Audible to narrate audiobooks in a Brit voice). She writes mysteries, and makes some pretty good numbers.
Nichelle Nichols also had a science fiction book out.
Claudia Christian of Babylon 5 has a ton of fiction and non-fiction.
Amber Benson of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a ton of bestselling urban fantasy books, and even a few fantasy books for kids.
So basically, it’s the mainstream actresses who don’t do this stuff.
My opinion on why there aren’t more women celebs writing books:
1. They don’t want to.
2. They are, but using pen names to avoid playing on their status as actors.
Why it matters, I can’t say. People should do what they want. It’s not like writing is everybody’s dream, after all. (Just 80% of humanity, judging by the writing forums.)
I’d say Paul Theroux sneaked a little honesty into his praise. “Cauchemaresque” means “resembling a nightmare.”
I’m more concerned with how many celebrities, male or female, are “writing” children’s books. Some people think these are easy to create because they’re short. Hah!
I’ve heard painful comments from serious writers of children’s books about the poorly done books that dominate many bookstore shelves simply because the “author” is famous. Pair Mr. or Ms. Celebrity with a good artist and voila, a picture book–one that often lacks rhythm, creativity, sensitivity and beauty of language.
While I’m a far-from-famous author (for grownups), I promise never to take up acting no matter how much money someone offers me. (Except a cameo as myself, as if that would ever happen!)
Sheesh, those poor oppressed women like Reese and Oprah. I guess they’ll have to hope they’ll reach more people with their television and movie projects than a ghost-written book.
Who cares? Not I.
Since you mention a couple of Trek actors I’d like to add a third: Jonathan Frakes. Dean Wesley Smith has a nice story about ghost writing a novel for him in six days, which he suspects Tor published without any kind of editing and possibly without anyone having read the manuscript (it was the good old days so Tor had a fixed publication date complete with orders taken and a planned publicity push, they just lacked a book to go with the cover).
See https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/writing-a-novel-from-a-cover/
It turned out that Frakes was nice people and insisted that Smith got credit inside the book. Smith’s blog posting also claims that Shatner actually helped in the writing of his books.
That’s a cool story, and it’s nice that Frakes had integrity about the whole thing. It’s interesting that Smith understood what a “Frakes” story would be like. I don’t think I ever paid close attention to his storytelling style when I noticed him directing episodes, so much as I thought, “Good for him for getting to do that!”
Add to those from Star Trek who’ve written books LeVar Burton (I have one of his), and Walter Koenig. SF seems to get in the blood. 🙂
In answer to the question: were they supposed to be writing novels? It’s not something you want anyone to do if they don’t have the aptitude or inclination to do it, so let the actresses do their thing. Don’t pester them to do a different thing.
The actresses may fear that a novel written by an actress (or an actor) won’t be taken seriously. They may have a point. I vaguely recall that William Shatner had a byline on some sci-fi novels, TekWar. James Doohan did something similar, and at the time I remember being skeptical of whether or not these books could be any good. I believe in Shatner’s case it turned out to be a “Sweet Valley High” situation, where the byline says “Created by Francine Pascal,” and the books were ghost written.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff? That excerpt is probably what most people assume they’d get if an actor writes a book, so it surprises me that any actors are willing to use their real names at all when writing novels. The deck is stacked against them in reviews.
The OP should just accept that not every one does every thing. It’s cool when people do the unexpected, like when you find out a rockstar is also an astrophysicist, a situation crying for a Douglas Adams treatment. I love finding out that a celebrity is a Hedy Lamarr type in their spare time. I just don’t see why the OP thinks it’s a problem if most people, actresses, in this case, just do the one thing.
PG had to look up Michael Imperioli to discover he was a supporting actor in The Sopranos.
I’m intrigued that you managed to escape the “Sopranos” phenomena. I didn’t watch that show, but I still heard about it incessantly. Soooo many on-air blurbs praised that show, so much so that MadTV almost got me when they did a parody of the praise. I happened to hear MadTV while doing something else, and only realized I was hearing a parody when the announcer cracked, “If I miss an episode of the Sopranos, I just might die.” Sheesh.
The Doohan books were co-written (ghost written?) by S.M. Stirling.
Ah, that’s interesting. At the time that these books first appeared, I’d just discovered that sci-fi and fantasy existed in literary form. I would not have known who Stirling was back then, else I might not have been so skeptical.
To be fair, I heard a lot about The Sopranos too, but I’d have to wrack my brain to come up with the names of any of the main actors, forget about those playing the supporting characters.
“Why Aren’t Female Celebrities Writing More Novels?”
Maybe because those that don’t are smart enough to know what they’re good at – and what they aren’t?
Or maybe because they’ve seen how the current culture seems hell-bent on finding flaws or conflicts to bring others down? Why would anyone but a fool offer them any extra ammunition?
To me the OP seems more worried about color and sex than they are what is written – and how well …