Book: i'l Never Write My Memoirs

In looking for something totally different this time, I ran across the memoirs of Grace Jones, the androgynous disco singer, on the bargain shelf.

Sure, why not.

She grew up in a strict religious family in Jamaica, and sought to liberate herself as soon as she was old enough to escape to the US. Her journey ever since has been one of testing boundaries and pushing people's buttons.

I'd forgotten she appeared in a Bond movie and an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Her time as a supermodel kinda turns my stomach. Big paydays for looking glamorous and going to Studio 54. Such a shallow mindless life.

Rich men who need to be surrounded by unreal supermodels, and the industry of little girl groomers who feed the need. Ugh.

Jones describes New York in the '80s as "obsessed with celebrity" -- who was seen where with whom wearing what.  It was all about being seen, all about making a splash. Supermodels and Club 54 and strutting around town.

Donald Trump came out of that milieux.  Well, I say "came out of" but I guess he never outgrew it.

I don't think this book was ghost written or even collaboratively written.  It jumps around kaleidoscopically, anarchistically, like a train of thought without tracks.  She garbles three thoughts in each sentence, contradicting her narrative every other sentence.  Stories go on for pages, interrupted in every sentence by a dozen unrelated asides.  It's like interviewing a dozen schizophrenics at once.

Where I'm reading now she's describing a traveling show she put together called "One Man Show." She calls it revolutionary, she compares it to Marlene Dietrich, to Bertolt Brecht, to Elvis. She says it was influenced by Kabuki and Andy Warhol.

The thing is online. She stands around in ridiculous costumes, reciting her tuneless songs, on minimalist sets.

Perception versus reality.

Jones was offered the role of Zhora in Blade Runner, but turned it down. She would have been great in it.

Chapter 14 describes the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, and the shitty Reagan Administration response to it.

Quote :

You couldn't help but think of the people you had slept with or, even more so, of the people who has slept with the people you had slept with. It had been so easy to sleep around. Sex was a vital part of individual freedom. It was meant to lead to more life, not death.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I don't think this book was ghost written or even collaboratively written.  It jumps around kaleidoscopically, anarchistically, like a train of thought without tracks.  She garbles three thoughts in each sentence, contradicting her narrative every other sentence.  Stories go on for pages, interrupted in every sentence by a dozen unrelated asides.  It's like interviewing a dozen schizophrenics at once.

"As told to Paul Morley." Apparently the book was dictated in a series of interviews with Morley, who is a rock journalist and former member of The Art of Noise. It would appear he did very little to organize the resulting text. Grace probably sat for a couple dozen talk sessions and this book is the transcribed result.

Stream-of-consciousness makes more sense if you're talking out loud, without any planning on what you're going to say.