![]() ![]() "Little Known Facts" posits itself as an examination of the "fallout of fame," a moral indictment of the intimate impact of celebrity and yet the celebrity at its center never quite proves why he's worth such a fuss. The novel is a portrait of celebrity Renn Ivins - an actor-writer-director in the vein of George Clooney (had Clooney married and fathered two kids) or a younger Clint Eastwood - painted through the perspectives of seven of Ivins' family members, lovers and hangers-on. This isn't exactly the question at the heart of Christine Sneed's earnest new novel, "Little Known Facts," but perhaps it should have been. After all, what is at its center but a void? In person, is the celebrity ever as fascinating as the person we've imagined he might be? (The short answer, as anyone who has ever watched back-to-back episodes of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" can attest, is: Rarely.) The vacuum that is celebrity, in which we project our own fantasies onto a face and thereby turn that person into a star, is ultimately an empty subject. Much has been said about our culture's obsession with celebrity, but there is also much that just isn't worth saying. ![]()
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