From Naomi Watts to Graydon Carter, 5 celebrity memoirs worth your time
Also on our list: tell-alls by DvF’s husband Barry Diller, Balthazar restaurant founder Keith McNally, and Hollywood insider Griffin Dunne
Perhaps it’s due to a collective nostalgia for glory years we did or didn’t experience, a necessary source of escapism in rather grim times, or because we really do want to find out if celebrities are just like us, but recent years have witnessed a boom in celebrity memoirs. Not just celebrities either, but high-profile editors, tycoons and assorted influential people have been putting pen to paper (or their memoirists and ghostwriters have) to capture not only their life and work, but also the culture surrounding them.
For what makes a memoir interesting? Well, for one, it needs to be juicy. We need some tidbits; there must be proximity to celebrity and/or glamour, perhaps a redemption arc and an insight into the world at large through the eyes of said person. The current, well, vogue for books about those high up in the pecking order at publishing behemoth Condé Nast is a case in point. Everybody is talking about When the Going was Good by Graydon Carter, the former long-time editor of Vanity Fair, for precisely these reasons. The days of limitless budgets and town cars are well and truly over for most publishing houses – but oh boy, we really do want to read about when the days really were that good.
Ultimately, we want to read the truth of someone – without all the edges sawn off – and in reading about someone else we might learn something about ourselves too.
Here are five star-powered memoirs worth the read.
When the Going was Good – Graydon Carter
Who Knew – Barry Diller
