A Massive Swelling

by Cintra Wilson

Viking Press / Penguin 2000

The intent of this book is pretty succinctly summed up by the sub-title: “Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease.” And that’s what Cintra Wilson attacks in page after page in her own unique brand of hilariously vomitous and foamy loathing. Skewered here in the best dark and side-splitting rants are everything from teen idols, to the Bruce Willis album, to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, to plastic surgery, to deeply, deeply disturbed, obsessive fan letters addressed to rock stars.

Sure, none of these edifices to popular culture are exactly difficult marks, nor are these thoughts that will be anything foreign to those with fully functioning frontal lobes, but the prose with which she tears them down is so entertainingly wicked — chewing through icons of popular culture like the dangerously out of control and undulating lip of a chainsaw — that you can’t help but keep flipping pages, wanting, needing to know what she will dare to say next.

Witness just one chapter opener to convince you: “While I like to embrace all cultures, no matter how remote, reveling in their differences and adopting their trinkets and religious idiosyncrasies and snacks of exotica, I fear that there is nothing to love about the dijeree-doo.” Convinced? If not, you can just go back to listening to your Justin Timberlake album, because there’s no hope for you.

- Michael Houghton