I had a little piece on Maradona and his biography, ghostwritten by Daniel Arcucci and translated to English by Marcela Mora y Araujo, in the Paris Review last week. It’s an exceptional book. I have never read anything like it. The energy of it is so fun and dramatic. I got so many lovely messages from football people too, which was lovely. I love the football people now, what a great community.
It made me quite sad while reading this book that celebrities are broadly so boring these days. You see this the most when someone is trying to eek the sense of a zaney personality out in a celebrity profile, furnishing really banal traits and behaviours with this sort of semi-hysterical declarative voice to try and disguise how bland they are.
The archetypal cliche of this is “X actress walked into the room with her hair scraped back, wearing barely a scrap of makeup, but still looking every inch a star” type stuff.
It’s depressing. Actresses should be glamorous. I don’t want to read about famous people mooching around in joggers with their hair scraped back while they’re at work. That’s real life maybe, but the whole point of celebrities is that they aren’t real life.
Also, is it even real life? Do most people go to important work meetings without making an effort to look polished? I don’t think they do.
Likewise I don’t want celebrities to be nice, affable, conscientious types who never do drugs or have affairs. I don’t find that kind of celebrity interesting but I also just don’t find them likeable. I know that kind of public image is supposed to be inoffensive (and probably good for brand deals) but I don’t think inoffensiveness translates to likability. Certainly I don’t think it ever translates to someone or their persona being lovable.
I hate this idea that celebrities should have to be relatable. But, on top of this, the idea of what relatability means seems so bland and dreary I often find myself wondering: Relatable to who? The most boring person you’ve ever met in your life?
A short one today because of Easter.
Happy Easter xxxxx
You can buy my novel, Lazy City here.