“All I’ve ever wanted my whole life,” Cat Marnell, former beauty editor of www.xoJane.com and former VICE columnist, writes in her book proposal to Simon & Schuster, “was a way to escape and get numb.”
The 35-page outline and 38-page personal essay netted her a $500,000 advance, Jezebel reported. Marnell became famous for documenting her heavy drug use in beauty columns for www.xoJane.com and her series of columns for VICE, “Amphetamine Logic.”
If you’re in the mood to feel really depressed, read her VICE columns — she writes about her father, a psychiatrist who first put her on Adderall at 15, and her subsequent addiction to speed since then, among other things. She’s like a character from a Bret Easton Ellis novel, and her emaciated body and ever-present smeared eye makeup cause her to look like a Barbie doll that’s been dragged around by a dog.
She writes about taking Plan B three times in a month, her obsession with thinness and her cavorts around New York City and San Francisco with married male celebrities. Her stories run in the same vein as Lindsay Lohan, Courtney Love and Edie Sedgwick: bleach-blond train wrecks, always searching for a fix.
Although Simon & Schuster is essentially handing Marnell $500,000 to spend on cocaine and PCP, its decision to pick up Marnell’s memoir is a brilliant business move. After all, it’s impossible to look away from a train wreck.
Marnell knows this and writes at the end of her book proposal (which was leaked to a few online news outlets), “I will write a New York Times #1 Bestseller. Swag!” Her proposed title: “How to Murder Your Life.”
Although the book will be a first-hand account of addiction, hers is not a story of redemption and recovery. Though employers have coerced Marnell to go to rehab in the past, she calls her addiction a lifestyle choice. According to a New York Times profile, Marnell left xoJane in late 2012.
In a statement to Page Six, Marnell said, “I couldn’t spend another summer meeting deadlines behind a computer at night when I could be on the rooftop of Le Bain looking for shooting stars and smoking angel dust with my friends and writing a book, which is what I’m doing next.”
Marnell’s aesthetic is puzzling. Is it a gimmick? Is the sexy, free-spirited druggie act all contrived?
Beyond her dubious personal marketing strategy lies the ethical dilemma of Simon & Schuster editors knowingly supplying a self-proclaimed addict with enough money to keep her high for a long, long time.
A Forbes article titled “Cat Marnell, Buzz Bissinger and the Ethics of Publishing an Addict” quoted Simon & Schuster editor Sarah Knight on the house’s decision to purchase Marnell’s memoir.
“I think if somebody can put together a book proposal and can write 40 terrific pages, she’s obviously in control of her behavior,” Knight said. “I don’t really think it’s for me to judge whether Cat is or should be allowed to write a book because of circumstances in her past.”
However, Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici argued that the matter still raises unsettling questions.
“Is there something exploitative about handing a megaphone and a fat wad of cash to someone who suffers from pathological impulsivity? Is it a form of enabling?” Bercovici wrote. “Is there a line beyond which a writer’s need to share the darkest details of his or her existence deserves to be viewed as a symptom? And what, if any, are a publisher’s responsibilities when faced with a writer who has crossed over that line?”
Knight’s statement is a cop-out when faced with the questionable ethics of rewarding a drug addict with money and attention. Marnell herself writes in her proposal, “Between you and me, half the time I feel very little remorse. AND I have a massive ego.”
Although the decision to publish Marnell is smart in terms of strategy — the book will sell, obviously, and may indeed become a New York Times Bestseller — what is the real cost?
Chloe Finch is a journalism sophomore at UF. Her column runs on Thursdays. You can contact her via opinions@alligator.org.
