In this account of the shaping of Hemingway's popular reputation, Raeburn presents his thesis that Hemingway's public personality in the 1920s, that of incorruptible artist struggling in poverty to become a literary master, was integrated with Hemingway the writer. But by 1924 he began projecting his public personality in the Paris-based Transatlantic review and by 1932 in Death in the Afternoon presented a portrait of its author as he wished to appear -- sportsman, manly man, exposer of sham, arbiter of taste, world traveler and battle-scarred veteran and continued to dramatize himself in his nonfiction. Raeburn maintains that Hemingway's celebrity derived not so much from the skill and success of his fiction as from his self-advertisements and mass media's portraits. ISBN 0-253-12690-8 : $17.50.

Boker (English and comparative literature, Columbia U.) examines the "prolonged adolescence" of the American male canon, focusing in depth on the work of Melville, Twain, and Hemingway. Boker reveals in these authors' lives and fiction a world of perpetual adolescence, repressed grief, and repudiation of feminine identification. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive? In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable. Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era's most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel. Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.