Pamela Anderson turns novelist

By SHOLTO BYRNES

It's noon outside the Barnes & Noble book store in the Rockefeller Centre, New York, and a queue stretches down 48th St from Fifth Avenue all the way to the Avenue of the Americas.

An elderly couple pause in front of the store. "What's going on?" asks the wife, a diminutive, myopic woman.

She spots the poster in the window nearest the door. "Is Tommy Franks here today?" The retired general smiling back at her is not on hand to sign copies of his autobiography. "It's Pamela Anderson," replies her husband, an ox of a man who's a good head and shoulders taller than his spouse.

His wife looks blank. "Pamela Anderson," he repeats, loud enough for passers-by to turn their heads. "She's got these breasts," he explains, his hands circling outwards as though to sketch the outline of two enormous watermelons. "She's famous."

Over in the press queue tempers are rising as a newcomer fails to respect the order already established. "Hey!" calls out one photographer to a visibly stressed co-ordinator. "Don't let him go to the front. We're here, we were first. Don't go there, buddy," he warns.


To be fair to Anderson, this is an important day for her. She is making her literary debut with Star: a novel, which the publicity material announces is, "a breathless romp through Tinseltown and tabloids" that "goes well beyond the cliched air-kisses and casting couches of Hollywood to show what really happens when A-list meets D-cup, when girl becomes goddess".

Those waiting for Anderson to turn up for the book-signing clutch their copies of Star, the title of which is framed by a pink star on the front cover. It, and other, smaller stars, also preserve the modesty of the author, whose full-length form, naked apart from a pair of tasteful white stilettos, adorns the dust jacket. The image is repeated inside with the main star omitted so the author's breasts can be admired in all their rock-hard glory.

Even an actress as respected as Anderson is for her versatility, her modesty, her outstanding interpretation of challenging roles, is entitled to worry about the critical reaction to her first book. Can she transfer the talents she displayed as CJ in Baywatch to a different artistic genre? Will the success of her film Barb Wire be matched in the literary field? Dare one mention the Pulitzer Prize? The Prix Goncourt?


Eventually a cheer goes up. Anderson has arrived at the 48th St entrance, and a crowd blocks traffic as she and her entourage step out of a limousine. Police push the crowd back as it surges toward the object of its fascination, who flashes a smile, and is gone in a cloud of platinum-blond hair.

Inside, when the press are finally allowed into the pen, staff keep strict order. Two lines of photographers get five minutes to snap the author in a hot-pink halter top, matching clutch purse (and toenail varnish), faded blue jeans, and, excitingly, what look like the same stilettos she's wearing on the dust jacket.

Her ghostwriter, Eric Shaw Quinn, sits behind the table next to her. But no one seems too interested in him. At one point, Anderson, by now standing, playfully holds a copy of the novel in front of Quinn's face. Twenty cameras instantly record a picture of the headless man, who takes it in good grace.

Larry, who works for a celebrity picture agency, tries to set up before his time. "Don't spoil it for the rest of us, Larry," calls one snapper. He doesn't have to worry. A staff member is on Larry's case. "If you try to take even one picture, you're outta here!" Larry puts his camera down.

Then there is a murmur from the photographers at the front. We can see another platinum-blond head. It is Victoria Gotti, daughter of John Gotti, the late Mafia boss known as "the Dapper Don". Gotti, who looks far more plastic even than Anderson - and rather scary, too - is starring in Growing Up Gotti, a new "real-life" series featuring her, her three sons and their Long Island mansion.

She is, appropriately enough given the title of Anderson's novel, the editor-at-large of a celebrity news journal called Star Magazine.


I am told firmly that Anderson is giving no interviews. With no chance to speak to her, I try to observe from as close up as I can. Her makeup is thick, her nose more snubbed than one imagines, a posed smile stuck rigidly to her lips. I can't help focusing rather more than is polite on her breasts. Actually, given the fame they have brought her, perhaps it's impolite not to examine them; it would be like going to Egypt and not seeing the pyramids, or Paris and not popping into the Louvre.

They are indeed wondrous, in size at any rate. But not particularly sexy. They look a little too hard, like the arches on an overinflated air bed, and possibly as uncomfortable to rest one's head on.

When we finally make our way into the inner sanctum we have our bags taken, and are told firmly not to ask the books to be personalised. She is busy talking to one of her people while she scrawls "Pamela" with a top-heavy "P" that encircles the rest of her name.

Outside, crowds are gathering again to catch Anderson on her way out. Her limo is late, but the celebrity bodyguard Chuck Zito strolls out and joshes with the crowd.

Afterwards, I read the novel. The main character, Star Wood Leigh, appears in a TV show about lifeguards, meets a rock star who introduces himself by licking her face (as Tommy Lee did), and sleeps with a procession of men - I count 12 in the book, not including "extras" in the orgy scenes.

It also features some memorable lines.

Early on, Star experiences, "a spider sense that something was missing, like that feeling you get when you stand looking into the refrigerator, not really hungry, but unable to stop looking. The feeling that this time it might be there, right behind the ketchup and the pickled beets". Star also displays an unusual lack of awareness of the world. When a blimp field is pointed out to her, she says: "Blimps grow in fields?"

To her fans, such prose borders on the genius. A fan who reviewed her book writes: "I was moved by her ability to aptly and with heartfelt emotion give the reader such an honest and inspiring message. Five out of five stars barely justifies the almost poetic merit that this piece delivers."

- INDEPENDENT


* Star: a novel, published by Simon & Schuster, will be released in New Zealand on December 3.