THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060054
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY TIM WARREN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
``YOU KNOW, writing a book about your life is a lot like psychotherapy,'' Robin Quivers confides toward the end of her autobiography. ``It stirs up a lot of old conflicts, like ones I've described, which in turn make all kinds of memories come floating to the surface of your mind.''
So, yes, confession is good for the soul, and undergoing therapy can be beneficial, but what kind of book does it make?
In the case of ``Quivers: A Life'' (HarperCollins. 341 pp. $22), it's the standard contemporary celebrity autobiography. That is, it's full of self-absorbed chronicling of Quivers' life, from her childhood in Baltimore to her current position as co-host of Howard Stern's nationally syndicated radio show. Indeed, for a person who is part of a legendarily irreverent and often cynical five-hour program each weekday morning, Quivers delivers her life story with surprising heavyhandedness. There's little humor, and a whole lot of sharing her feelings.
In short, though she tells us what it's like to work with Stern and how they've risen to the top of radio, this book really isn't much beyond a good cryfest on the ``Leeza Gibbons Show.''
Here are the highlights: There's the troubled childhood (Quivers says her father sexually abused her); low self-esteem; man troubles, brought on in part by the former; periods of drug abuse; bouts of clinical depression, and then, after years of intensive therapy, healing and self-awareness. By the book's final pages, she's tried to make peace with her aging and infirm father, and concludes, ``I realize for the first time that forgiving is an ongoing process, something I'm going to have to work on every day. I'm pleased, though, that I'm strong enough to try.'' Does anybody need a good hug?
This is not to make light of Quivers' difficulties, or her evidently admirable determination in overcoming them. Rather, it's the whole tone of her book. Certainly, if another celebrity had come up with a fatuous autobiography as full of psychobabble and navel-gazing as this one, Quivers and Stern would have had a jolly time making fun of it. And rightfully so.
A celebrity making dramatic personal disclosures can be mildly titillating, but Quivers has two problems. Though there's some curiosity about this black woman who shares the microphone with the frequently outrageous Stern, she's not that much of a celebrity that we want 341 pages about her life. Besides, we're living in the Age of Confession. If those ghastly TV talk shows can give us programs on lesbian killer nuns, who cares about one more celebrity who did too many drugs, slept around some and didn't always like herself?
At the same time, there's a smugness toward the end of ``Quivers: A Life'' that is very annoying. She recounts a trip back to her old working-class black neighborhood in Baltimore as an attempt to reconcile with her father and to help her move on emotionally in general. She writes how the roughness of the neighborhood frightens her, how its residents seem without hope.
She tries to sound sympathetic, but she's really condescending. She professes not to understand the anger of the blacks who live in those circumstances, and allows, anyway, that ``I'll be back in the safe confines of white suburbia tonight.'' The people who think she is a sell-out to blacks and women for working with Stern will have a field day with that one. MEMO: Tim Warren is a book critic who lives in Silver Spring, Md. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Robin Quivers wrote her autobiography with surprising
heavyhandedness.
by CNB