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A free preview collection of essays from Tom Payne, author of FAME
We may regard celebrities as deities, but that does not mean we worship them with deference. From prehistory to the present, humanity has possessed a primal urge first to exalt the famous but then to cut them down (Michael Jackson, anyone?). Why do we treat the ones we love like burnt offerings in a ritual of human sacrifice? Perhaps because that is exactly what they are.
In this collection of essays, Tom Payne -- of the website Popcropolis and the "trenchant, unsettling, and darkly hilarious" Fame (New York Times Book Review) -- draws the narratives of the past and the immediate present into one intriguing story.
INCLUDES AN EXCERPT FROM FAME!
We may regard celebrities as deities, but that does not mean we worship them with deference. From prehistory to the present, humanity has possessed a primal urge first to exalt the famous but then to cut them down (Michael Jackson, anyone?). Why do we treat the ones we love like burnt offerings in a ritual of human sacrifice? Perhaps because that is exactly what they are.
In this collection of essays, Tom Payne -- of the website Popcropolis and the "trenchant, unsettling, and darkly hilarious" Fame (New York Times Book Review) -- draws the narratives of the past and the immediate present into one intriguing story.
INCLUDES AN EXCERPT FROM FAME!
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Reviews
"Payne's wonderfully witty and erudite study of modern fame in the light of ancient myths and rituals is markedly kinder and more balanced, and yet also more unsettling."
Sunday Times (UK)
"Payne takes us through all the various similarities between sacrificial rituals and the world of Hello! and Grazia. . . . He explains these and other ideas with tremendous gusto, humor, and many flashes of self-knowing irony. . . . Fame is a good read."
Mary Beard, The Observer (UK)