Fame, according to Milton’s poem, spurs “the clear spirit... To scorn delights, and live laborious days”. For Milton, that quest for lasting renown was an aristocratic pursuit, an “infirmity of noble mind”. Michael Wolff’s new book begins by lamenting “the democratisation of fame”: no achievement is required of today’s self-promoting wannabes, and all that counts is visibility on social media. Yet the celebrities Wolff examines retain a status that he calls “semi-heroic” because they suffer the penalties of fame or infamy, which include “humiliation, prosecution, jail, even death”. Too Famous begins with Hugh Grant dodging the inevitable blitz of selfies by retreating into defensive privacy; it ends as Jeffrey Epstein dies in the solitude of his prison cell.
Wolff himself became famous by writing three books of inflammatory gossip about the Trump administration. To capitalise on that success, he now recycles some early journalism, adding an unpublished account of time apparently spent in Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, where – although he doesn’t say how or why he obtained such indiscreet access – he eavesdrops as the predator’s cronies put him through a course of “media training” in the hope of palliating his crimes.
Although Wolff broods about the “dark heart” of virulent America, he brightens the gloom by claiming that the antics of his rich, powerful and notorious subjects are mostly showbiz, hyped up to satisfy the “perceptual imperialism” of the media. He advises Piers Morgan to be “more of a phony-baloney” if he wants to succeed on American television; Steve Bannon, his bigotry overlooked, is acclaimed as a shrewd flim-flam merchant. The cynical rule applies to Wolff himself. He attends Harvey Weinstein’s trial – which Weinstein, ever the impresario, refers to as “the show” – “out of pity and interest”. Interest of what kind? Probably financial: Weinstein guarantees Wolff a cool million if he writes a book about his downfall. This is a culture in which pathological conduct is marketed as entertainment, and Wolff enjoys such mad, amoral audacity too much to be bothered condemning it.
Anxious to qualify as a contender, Wolff takes pride in being as ruthless as the moguls he interviews. Hence his alliance with Roger Ailes, the disgraced and now defunct chief executive of Fox News. When Wolff called Ailes “the new American antichrist”, Ailes took that as a compliment and befriended him; with a nonchalant shrug, Wolff adds that he later sold Ailes out. He eagerly accepts a magazine’s request for a “ritual disembowelling” of Mike Bloomberg, then running for mayor of New York. “I flogged him,” gloats Wolff, “with merry cruelty.”
This malevolence mainly targets British journalists who are a little too famous for Wolff’s liking. He mocks the “sainthood’ wished on Christopher Hitchens and Alan Rusbridger by their admirers, and sneers at Tina Brown for failing to make “fuck-you money”. The true monsters Wolff encounters receive more lenient treatment. He salutes Trump’s “virtues”, calls him “fun-loving, even joyous”, and relishes his “jaunty joie de guerre”. He finds Epstein’s New York lair convivial, not sinister, with nibbles and tipples constantly on offer; he does not demur when Bannon tells their host: “You don’t look at all creepy, you’re a sympathetic figure.”
Wolff even drools over Boris Johnson as a “nearly Queen Mumish” object of adulation. In an article dating from 2004, he watches the undressed national treasure blunder through the muddle of his Islington house in search of his trousers, chases him to King’s Cross to catch a train that has already left from Liverpool Street, and tracks his increasing dishevelment throughout the day, his shirt tail flapping loose, his fly agape, his hair scatter-brained. Wolff admires the chaos as “artful presentation”, an exercise in “overdramatised fallibility”, and sees no need to worry about the consequences of putting this hot, windy mess in charge of a government.
Devilishly amused, Wolff remarks that “a colossal cosmic joke” got Trump elected president and made him “the destroyer of worlds”. The American disaster was at least colossal and cosmic; our insular calamity is less awesome. This is the way the world ends for us, not with a thunderous guffaw from above but with a silly snigger and some supposedly witty Latin puns.
• Too Famous by Michael Wolff is published by Little, Brown (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
