Book Review by Samuel L. Leiter
Casual notes on show biz books, memoirs and studies, dust gatherers, and hot off the presses.
Maureen Dowd, Notorious: Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Fashion, Culture, and Tech (New York: Harper, 2025): 385pp.
47th edition.
The celebrity interview anthology has long been a popular book niche in a world obsessed with the glamorous, artistic, brilliant, or simply notorious lives of famous people. These tomes generally collect a wide-ranging selection of interviews—either presented verbatim, question and answer style, from transcripts, however obtained—or woven into essays in which passages from one or more interviews share space with background research. Such research, of course, would include pertinent quotes from others in the subject’s orbit, gathered through additional interviews and/or discovered in other sources.
The latter is the meticulous, knowledgeable approach of Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a liberal journalist from a conservative Washington family, who has long excelled at puncturing pomp with wit. In her new book, Notorious: Portraits of Stars from Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech, she offers a curated gallery of her Times essays probing those who rule the stage, screen, runway, and boardroom. The memorable result is more than a collection of interviews—it’s a time capsule of an anxious, media-saturated America where fame is currency, power is slippery, and politics are never far behind.
The book is organized by thematic clusters: Leading Ladies, Leading Men, Funny People, Creative Class, Fashion Savants, and Writers, Moguls, and Visionaries. Although chronological order plays no part, most, not all, have a date, the majority falling in the last five years; a few go back as far as 1986 (Paul Newman),1991 (Kevin Costner and Warren Beatty),1992 (Al Pacino and Eddie Murphy). The rest cross the spectrum from 2009 (Tina Fey) to 2024.
The older essays offer that chill you get when you know what the future holds in store (either for the person involved or society in general). This comes across with particular bite in the chapters about people closely associated with Donald Trump over the years, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, before the fears floating about back in the day proved prescient. Even the 20th-century chapters, whose aftermaths are familiar, are compelling.
Dowd’s writing, as always, is equal parts sophisticated and satirical, layered with crisp phrasing, and barbed humor. Yet she never feels mean-spirited—just alert to the absurdities that power tends to invite.
Each profile contains moments of tension and unpredictability, none more so than in her now-famous “Confirm or Deny” segments, which conclude many interviews. These come across like association games used in psychological therapy, where the analyst says something and you say the first thing that comes to mind. The results provide often surprising and sometimes hilarious unscripted responses to provocative comments. Some people deflect, some laugh, and some reveal more than they perhaps intended.
Here are a few, brief, random examples:
Maureen Dowd: Marlon Brando was . . .
Jane Fonda: Disappointing. But a great actor.
Maureen Dowd: You keep your Oscar on the back of your toilet.
Kate Winslet: I don’t even know where the Oscar is at the moment. I think it’s possibly in my son’s bedroom. But it was on the back of the toilet for a long time, yes.
Maureen Dowd: You REALLY hate Harry Potter.
Ralph Fiennes. Yes.
Maureen Dowd: You like to throw your gum into the fireplace.
Larry David: Confirm. I also really like to throw anything—paper and gum—into baskets that are like 10 feet away to see if I can throw it in. I think I’m going to do a show about it.
Donald Trump, though not the subject of any single profile, is the book’s most persistent cameo. Many of Dowd’s subjects invoke him as either nemesis, foil, or cultural barometer. While most bare their claws at the mere mention of Trump’s name, some have a more temperate response, like late fashion icon André Leon Talley, or even a positive one, like Peter Thiel. Elon Musk, not yet the president’s partner in crime when interviewed in 2017, but certainly in his circle, takes a moderate position; fascinatingly, he bases his assessment regarding mankind’s positive or negative future on whether the person in charge is a Marcus Aurelius or a Caligula; the irony is as thick as a brick.
Thiel, however, provides a striking example. In one of the most ideologically provocative chapters, the billionaire tech investor explains his pro-Trump stance with cool conviction. Thiel sees Trump not as a threat but as a necessary disruption. Dowd keeps a light hand here, allowing readers to judge the tension between idealism and realism—or between provocation and rationalization—on their own.
This Trump thread, subtle but constant, gives Notorious unexpected cohesion. It charts the emotional evolution of a public reckoning in real time: from 2015 speculation to 2020 exhaustion and uncertainty. None of the interviews came after Trump’s latest victory. The book reads, in part, like a diary of cultural disorientation.
Though less emphasized than Trump, other political undercurrents emerge through discussions of the global economy and technology’s reach, especially that of AI. Musk’s musings in 2017 on the potential dangers of AI are unsettling, not merely for their scope but for how casually he discusses existential threats. Dowd’s well-researched chapter on the potential ramifications of AI is excellently done.
Although the book doesn’t dwell on business themes, it does interrogate the thoughts of tech insiders and media leaders, like Disney’s Bob Iger, whose businesses are tied to China, alluding to the ripple effects of Trump’s China trade war—a policy decision many view with skepticism or outright alarm. With tensions rising again, these comments feel prophetic.
Dowd may not foreground these issues, but her subjects bring them in naturally, and she wisely lets them stand. The result is a richer book than the subtitle might suggest—less about style and status, more about uncertainty and control.
If you have even a small amount of celebrity interest (I won’t say “worship”), you’ll want to read about who Jane Fonda would like to have had a romance with, how Uma Thurman feels about Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino, what a testy subject Kevin Costner proved to be, what Diane von Fürstenberg, thinks about fashion, feminism, and aging gracefully, and so on down the line of the book’s bouquet of 32 luminaries, not one of them a wilted flower. How can you not enjoy spending a few days in the intimate company of people like—to offer names not already dropped—Robert Redford, Idris Elba, Sean Penn, Danie Craig, Mel Brooks, Greta Gerwig, Tom Stoppard, Ryan Murphy, Patti Smith, Tom Ford, Ann Roth, Barry Diller, Jann Wenner, and, last but far from least, New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams?
Notorious is more than a highlight reel. It’s an index of American contradiction—where public figures wrestle with the burdens of celebrity, the corrosion of political norms, and the illusion of control in an age of algorithm and outrage. (The book’s biggest fault, however, is its lack of an actual index.) Whether you’re a casual reader, a cultural critic, or a political junkie, the book offers more than wit, gossip, and glamour. It contains something more enduring: a subtle but pertinent record of not only what it means to be a celebrity in our seismic times, but what such times augur for the road that lies ahead.
Next up: Putting the Rabbit in the Hat: A Memoir, by Brian Cox