The shelves are filled with books that raise narcissism to an art form, with more navel-gazing than on the Florida Citrus Council. Today, with our short attention spans, they call them "memoirs" - and just about anybody with a keyboard and an inflated sense of his own self-importance can try to get into Oprah's Book Club.
The genre includes. . .
Books by Unexceptional Women Who've Deluded Themselves into Thinking That Their Every Thought Is Transcendental.
Elizabeth Gilbert owns this terrain, having written the iconic "I am woman, hear me bore" title of all time: "Eat Pray Love."
Not since Anais Nin started writing about the angst in her pelvis has one woman made such a splash with her midlife crisis, dragging us along on her journey to (alleged) self-discovery.
She feels unappreciated in her marriage, so files for divorce from a husband who still loves her. And then, to recover from the split, she dines in Italy, divines in India and ultimately ends up supine in Bali with a hot Brazilian.
I know that a lot of women found that life-affirming, but the only affirmation I came away with was that she did her ex a huge favor by dumping him.
Books by Misfits Who Need to Tell Us How Pathetic They Used to Be but Aren't Anymore (Wink-Wink).
I'm not even going to get into the whole "James Frey lied to Oprah" situation in which people write books that pretend to be fact-based about how screwed up they used to be.
I'll limit myself to the people who were authentically screwed up but found God or AA or Dr. Phil and now feel good enough to write explicit tell-alls where, for $25.95, they'll make us feel sane (or depressingly normal) by comparison.
