If the Author of a Book Wears False Eyelashes, Most Likely Someone Else Wrote It

The new season of The Hills reminded me of my serendipitous attendance at two bookstore readings by Hills-related authors, Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag (who appeared with her coauthor and husband, Spencer Pratt).

Last November I found myself killing time at the Borders inside the upscale mall at Columbus Circle in New York, and discovered that Heidi and Spencer were there to promote their just-published book, How to Be Famous.

I did not want to be seen by anyone who might know me at a Heidi and Spencer reading, but I thought my Hills-watching niece might want some inside dirt into what the real Heidi was like. (This was before the ten plastic surgeries.) So I headed toward the area where readings are held and soon heard Heidi's high-pitched squealing, and a woman walking next to me moaned, "God, I hate her voice."

Instead of the usual chairs set up for book lovers, about a hundred photographers with popping flashbulbs stood in front of Heidi and Spencer, and two enormous security men were positioned behind them. This wouldn't be a reading, I learned, just a book-signing. Those who wanted a signed copy were told to enter a crowd-controlling roped-off maze, as if Queen Elizabeth herself were making an appearance.

I did not want a book, signed or unsigned, but I did gawk for a while. Heidi's waist-long platinum hair looked like nothing found in nature, resembling the cheap hair you'd find on a Barbie doll knockoff. Her makeup was caked on and her eyelashes were thick and long. No real author wears false eyelashes, but Heidi isn't a real author, of course. A ghostwriter, no doubt someone far less glamorous, must have done the actual work.

There weren't enough buyers to keep these "authors" signing, so Heidi and Spencer spent the time bantering with the photographers. Then something happened that made me realize that publishing as I once knew it is dead. As a man entered the security maze, Heidi yelled, "Hey, it's Mel Berger!" A literary agent at the William Morris Agency, Berger is a no-nonsense old-style publishing veteran I had dealt with many times in my career. What could he possibly want with Heidi and Spencer?

He posed for a photo with Heidi and Spencer, chatted a few seconds, then took off. I can only assume he is their agent; but even so, why would someone of his stature want a photo taken with them? I hope he also has a young niece who finds Heidi intriguing.

After that night, I never saw Heidi and Spencer's literary venture in any store or a review in any publication. It disappeared without a trace.

Three months later, I arrived in Tribeca an hour too early for a dinner, so wandered over to the nearby Barnes & Noble. Lo and behold, I found another Hills author, Lauren Conrad, about to sign some books. As with her Hills costars, Lauren would not be reading from her work, no chairs were set up for the event, and a hundred photographers waited. But there were differences too. Lauren drew a huge audience--hundreds of teenage girls were lined up in the roped-off security maze--and the photographers were allowed only a few minutes with Lauren, then asked to leave by the woman running the signing, so that Lauren could "spend time with you all." At this, the girls, many of whom had been lined up since early that morning, began to scream. Unlike Heidi and Spencer, Lauren sold some books.

Lauren's fame seems accidental. She appeared on a reality show and because she possesses that intangible quality that makes young America embrace her, she became a celebrity. MTV tried to duplicate her success, but hasn't found anyone else with her appeal. Someone like her would never fall for someone like Spencer. She seemed polite and well-raised, but cannily knew how to keep the overzealous fans at bay. I watched as a homeless man approached for her signature, and she treated him as gracefully as she did the others.

But Lauren's false eyelashes also cast a shadow on her face. I suppose she also didn't write the two books carrying her byline that were available to be signed that day.

Can I say with certainty that Real Authors Don't Wear False Eyelashes? Probably not. I bet Muriel Spark flirted with them back in the sixties, when they were high style. Maybe Edna O'Brien too. But it's hard to think of anyone else. I doubt even a writer like Ayn Rand would have resorted to such artifice.

P.S. In my book, Ann Coulter, whose giant false eyelashes were parodied as butterflies by Wanda Sykes, is not a real author.

Who Invented Cubism?

Pablo Picasso receives credit for originating the cubist style of painting with his 1907 masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. But a passage in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass--published in 1871!--makes us think that maybe it wasn't actually Picasso who conceived of cubism. In this excerpt from Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll's egg-like character, Humpty Dumpty, tells the young girl Alice how hard it will be to recognize her if they meet again, because human beings look so much alike:

"I shouldn't know you again if we did meet," Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake; "you're so exactly like other people."

"The face is what one goes by, generally," Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

"That's just what I complain of," said Humpty Dumpty. "Your face is the same as everybody has--the two eyes, so--" (marking their places in the air with his thumb) "nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance--or the mouth at the top--that would be some help."

"It wouldn't look nice," Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes and said "Wait till you've tried."

It is said that the early cubists--Picasso, George Braque, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris--were influenced by mathematical theories. Cubists painted fragmented forms, sometimes literally as cubes, sometimes showing different aspects of the same figures over and over, and sometimes distorting features. Carroll--as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, his real name--was a brilliant mathematician who taught this subject for many years at Oxford. So perhaps he invented cubism?