Everybody Loves You When You're Dead by Neil Strauss

 

Whilst not being the world’s number one pick-up artist, as detailed in his book The Game, Neil Strauss works at his day job, interviewing celebrities for feature articles in magazines. And rather important magazines too, because he’s had fantastic access to an enormous range of famous people, from Britney Spears to Neil Young and all stops in between, including people who are the kind of famous that allows them to be referred to under one name – Prince, Madonna, Bono, and, erm, Mafia. This book shows the author’s conversations with such people in a fuller form than deadlines and word limits could have allowed in the first place, something of a gamble, as some writers improve with editing. But thankfully Strauss is a good conversationalist, and by engaging his subjects, for the most part, in (well planned) conversation, he gets many of them to open up to him. Oddly, there are few surprises – most subjects are similar to their public images. But the value of this book is that it shows people engaging in dialogue with a good listener who teases more out of them than soundbites or staged interviews ever could. You still might not like them, but you’ll understand them better. [Keir Hind]