INVASIONS OF PRIVACY: Notes from a Celebrity Journalist

by Marian Christy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1984

Christy, a Boston Globe reporter and syndicated columnist (""Conversations""), takes a self-help, Me-generation approach to celebrity interviewing--determined to prove that ""mutuality works, that a columnist can be involved and involving"" when writing about famous people ""who shared intimate feelings with me and allowed me to share mine with them."" Here, then, after a brief, amusing account of her beginnings as a slightly irreverent fashion.reporter, Christy interweaves her celebrity-encounters with some of her own attempts at self-analysis--in loose, vaguely thematic chapters. She empathizes mightily with women who beat the odds--sharing ""antipatriarchal motivation"" with Diana Nyad, seeing her mother in Mrs. Anwar Sadat's ""peaceful approach"" to feminism, even finding something to like in unpleasant interview-ee Nora Ephron. (""I wrote a story about her courage."") A sticky section on love--""I have always loved love""--includes Jacob Javits opening up about his career-obsessed neglect of wife Marion. (""He put his feelings in my hands. . ."") Interviews about the price-of-fame--Barbara Walters, Peter Fonda--lead Christy to muse on her quest for byline fame, her choice of career over domesticity; Polly Bergen's insecurities are just like Christy's, it seems; an interview with super-coroner Noguchi becomes a discussion of Christy as a ""success slave."" (""Dr. Noguchi convinced me that I could do things for myself, things that were simply pleasurable, and my success wouldn't vanish because of it."") And, along with this frequently off-putting Me-too-ism, there are slightly crisper confidences about interviewing techniques, about one-upmanship (how to outchutzpah David Susskind) and the politics of celebrity journalism. An odd mishmash, then, with some sharp tidbits (celebs at their most infantile) amid the general mushiness.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION