Award-winning novelist Maureen Howard writes about celebrityhood, glamor and success–and what people are willing to do to get them–in her new novel, ”Expensive Habits” (Summit). She explores these issues through her protagonist, Margaret Flood, a famous writer who on her deathbed reviews her life.
Q–Why did you want to write a book about celebrityhood?
A–Because I think it`s getting to be a national disease. We`ve lost ourselves in the cult of personality. We seem to have become ”fans,” passive spectators of the passing scene. The stars whom we either admire or despise serve as a distraction from the things we should be thinking about, such as our own lives.
Q–Why does anyone want to be famous?
A–People believe fame can buy them a tiny little bit of immortality. Anonymity is hard. The individual used to be important in America, but he`s not any longer. Now you`ve got to walk a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers or kill your multimillionaire father to earn your 15 minutes of fame.
Q–What is the price of fame?
A–The loss of a personal life. And I don`t just mean Elizabeth Taylor saying it`s an invasion of her privacy to be Elizabeth Taylor. I mean actually believing that you are some two-dimensional figure rather than a complex human who is suffering through your days. You have to give up a lot of yourself to maintain an image.
Q–One of the points your book makes is that you have to sell out to achieve success. Why?
A–There is an erosion–a selling out–that starts at the very beginning of a career. There are things you have to do to get to the next step. You think you`re just pleasing the people around you, learning how to operate in the bigger world. But at some point, when you stop and look back, you realize that there`s been a tremendous amount of dishonesty. You realize that that wasn`t what you meant to say or write or think. People think that once they`ve achieved a certain level of success–getting into a certain law firm, a prestigious hospital, whatever–then they can be true to themselves. But by that time they`ve changed too much. Their ideals have slipped away.
Q–If People magazine came to you and said, ”Maureen, honey, sweetie, baby, we want to do a story on you and we`ll need a picture of you in a bubble bath drinking champagne and holding your book,” what would you say?
A–I`d say, ”Come back when I lose 25 pounds.” Seriously, I`d say,
”No, thanks,” even if my publisher would then be ready to kill me.
