A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations [Paperback]

Cintra Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2001

Whether you lust after it, loathe it, or feign apathy toward it, fame is in your face. Cintra Wilson gets to the heart of our humiliating fascination with celebrity and all its preposterous trappings in these hilarious, whip-smart, and subversive essays. Often radical and always a scream, Wilson takes on every sacred cow, toppling icons as diverse as Barbra Streisand, Ike Turner, Michael Jackson, and-for obvious reasons-Bruce Willis. She exposes events like the Oscars and even athletic jamborees as having grown a "tumescent aura of Otherness." Wilson's scathing and irresistible dissections of Las Vegas as "the Death Star of Entertainment," and Los Angeles as "a giant peach of a dream crawling with centipedes" pulse with her enlightened rejection of all things false and vain and egotistical. Written with her trademark zeal and intelligence, A Massive Swelling is the antidote for the fame virus that infects us all.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Warning: do not read this book at a wake, on a precipice, or with a full bladder. Unless you're a humorless fan of Cher, Michael Jackson, Barbra Striesand, or Mick Jagger, Wilson's turbo, heat-seeking essays about fame, the bane of our commodified culture, will induce bent-double, breathless laughter. A columnist for Salon and the San Francisco Examiner, Wilson, a latter-day Dorothy Parker without the self-hate, writes about the psychoses the lust for fame induces in the stars, their fans, and countless pathetic wanna-bes. In writing about boy bands, like the New Kids on the Block, Wilson reports on the disturbing fan mail they receive from women old enough to be their mothers. Excessive cosmetic surgery in pursuit of perfect bodies elicits blisteringly hilarious commentary on the likes of Courtney Love and Celine Dion. Smart, supercharged, ethical, and talented, Wilson also takes on the ersatz worlds of the Oscars and Las Vegas, and the malignancy of racism and sexism in Hollywood. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Cintra is an original. She is talented, funny, and altogether exceptional." -- Francis Ford Coppola

"I like to laugh and I like to think and Cintra makes me do both out loud and in public. She tells the truth funny. She's brilliant, she's funny, and she's really good-looking in that sexy picture in the back of the book that you get for no extra charge. She's better than the best, but you can't afford her, so just buy her book. It's the only thing about her that's cheap." -- Penn Jillette, Penn & Teller

"If the subjects of Cintra Wilson's loathing continue to appear in public after this book is published, it must be because they can't read." -- Greil Marcus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014100195X
• ISBN-13: 978-0141001951
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never read anything like this before: stiletto-commentary!, July 24, 2001

By 

Erin O'Brien (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations (Paperback)

Cintra Wilson, a former, longstanding columnist for the "San Francisco Examiner" with a substantial cult following, has produced her first book, a series of satirical essays on celebrities and our cultural obsession with them.

Wilson nails down the essential creepiness of true fandom with the inclusion of such artifacts as an entirely genuine boxful of inadvertently deliriously funny fanmail for "New Kids on the Block": the tragically illiterate x-rated writings of desperate, usually suburban, adult women to teenage boys.

Her observations appear in chapter-length discussions of Elvis in Vegas; the ever more bizarre persona of Michael Jackson and its psycho-sexual origins; and the LA and New York commonplace of the rabidly, shamelessly ambitious aspiring actor, who defines degradation down in a quest for fame.

Wilson argues that celebrity culture is not only toxic to the egos and even physical well-being of celebrities, but also to ordinary folk, ceaselessly encouraged to regard their own lives as inherently shabbier and less important, going undocumented in gossip columns and tabloids.

Wilson's rages at celebrity culture are startlingly real, and produce unforgettably, cruelly funny putdowns of figures from divas Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion, to Siegfried & Roy, as the quintessence of the degraded Las Vegas performer. One can only wonder at what private events befell Wilson to produce this magnificent fury at the fame machine, and a wild attack on its cogs and wheels.

Easily one of the most uproarious and literate works of pop cultural commentary available. Wilson is a true original.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Should Include a Disclaimer..., July 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined As a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations (Hardcover)

Cintra is my favorite columnist in Salon magazine, and I was really looking forward to this book. I was disappointed, however, to discover that most of the book consists of material that has already appeared in Salon (and can still be read by accessing her archived columns). Although I don't regret buying the book, I'm a little surprised that it doesn't include a disclaimer that it "contains previously published material" or something to that effect.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The anti-lobotomy for celebrity junkies, October 18, 2001

By 

Alicia Trees "blissgirl3" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations (Paperback)

My, wasn't I surprised to find someone who loathed Celine Dion as much as I do! Cintra Wilson's funny, fearless deconstruction of these so-called icons will surely immunize you against the cult of celebrity. Her chapter on young ice skaters and gymnasts broadens our scope of what this celebrity-thing is that people seek: sometimes involving a search for immortality (via plastic surgery, numerous dye jobs, changes in stage personae) and deification (sometimes resulting in an Oscar, a Grammy, or getting one's face on a cereal box)... Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Barbara Streisand - even Elvis - will never look the same to me again. Her criticism is scathing at times but very thoughtful: these are not random rants.

I was unfamiliar with Cintra Wilson's Salon column when I read "A Massive Swelling," but it doesn't surprise me that the book functions somewhat as an anthology of past writings. It does have that feel to it. I definitely don't think this weakens the book for the newcomer to her writings. I think it's a good sign that folks are mostly upset about not finding newer works from her. It just means we're all looking forward to what she has coming up next.