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NORTH CAROLINA L ITE R A R Y RE V IE W O N L INE
Celebrity Watchers a review by Amanda Stevens Tamra Wilson. “Dining with Robert Redford” & Other Stories. Bristol, VA: Little Creek Books, 2011.
Amanda Stevens is an NCLR Editorial Assistant. She is enrolled in ECU, working on her master’s degree in English with a concentration in literature. Tamra Wilson’s work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including NCLR, in which she published the title story of this collection in 2002 and another of her stories in 2001 (both under the name Tammy Wilson).
Tamra Wilson describes the stories in her collection, “Dining with Robert Redford” & Other Stories, as “slices of small-town life in the South, with a few celebrities thrown in” (www.tamrawilson. com). Wilson herself grew up in the small farming community of Shelbyville, IL, but has called North Carolina home for more than thirty years. In her stories, told from a consistently female perspective, she explores issues familiar to readers of Southern literature. A feature that sets Wilson’s collection apart is that while fulfilling a certain necessity for true-to-life appeal, she also – and often – juxtaposes the quintessential small-town American South against the “glitz” of celebrity status. Wilson says in an interview in the Hickory Daily Record that she believes “celebrity culture has replaced royalty in most modern societies. That’s why it permeates our consciousness.”* From the sighting of Robert Redford at a western North Carolina restaurant in the book’s title story to the mention of other stars like Kevin Costner, Brad Pitt, Pamela Anderson, and Alex Trebek in “Remembering Miss Wonderful” and “Dick & Rhoda,” celebrities pop in and out of these stories with regularity. In these and other stories in the collection, Wilson examines the influences of celebrity culture in American society, particularly through the characters’ keen awareness of social status and its ties to economic class. In “The Glamour Stretcher,” for example, the young narrator’s mother frets about cooking for
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out-of-town relatives visiting from California. These are wealthy relatives, whom the narrator’s mother believes are accustomed to expensive and exotic meals and entertainment and are used to being in the company of celebrities and Hollywood “hotshots.” As the narrator notes, “To [Mom], a visit from them was like opening the doors to the Maharaja and his maharini – exotic but intimidating” (27). It is no surprise to the narrator when the anticipation of their arrival sends her mother into overdrive, “cleaning, de-junking the closets and stewing over prospective meals” (28). On their part, Aunt Ramona and Uncle Doug go out of their way to give the impression that they are wealthier and more glamorous than they actually are. When the narrator’s grandmother died years prior, these relatives dropped everything to fly to the rescue. Her mother was touched, but her father claimed that their trip “had more to do with Uncle Doug having his pilot’s license and showing off” (26) than providing emotional support. At the funeral, Aunt Ramona moved down the receiving line looking “glamorous and blonde in her West Coast clothes . . . like a movie star on Oscar night . . . draw[ing] quite a few stares in her form-fitting sheath with platter collar and pillbox hat, pointed nails and beaded stilettos” (26– 27). According to the narrator’s father, Ramona was supposed to be a big star before “Uncle Doug snatched [her] away from a Hollywood bigwig” (27). She even shared an apartment with Marilyn Monroe, according to Uncle Doug,
* Richard Gould, “Professional Writer Pens First Book,” rev. of “Dining with Robert Redford” & Other Stories, Hickory Daily Record 19 Sept. 2011: web.