The Price of Illusion: A Memoir

This is a flashy memoir about woman from a Hollywood elite family who grows up among the rich and famous, and becomes so herself, all the while searching for meaning beyond the glittery facades that paper her life like expensive wallpaper.

Joan Juliet Buck was born into a Hollywood family. Her mother was a beautiful actress, during whose early career she befriended a fellow actress named Betty Perske, later known as Lauren Bacall. Her father was Jules Buck, producer of many films in the 50s-60s, and discoverer and ultimately business partner of Peter O'Toole, for whom Buck produced a number of films. The Bucks moved to France was Joan was 4, and they lived in both France and England, occupying palatial estates in the French countryside show more and stately and chic townhouses in London.

Joan describes a childhood spent hobnobbing with the famous and soon to be famous. Christmases were spent in Ireland with John and Angelica Huston and an as-yet-unknown Peter O'Toole. (Anjelica was to become a lifelong friend.) There's a lot of name-dropping as Buck relates an early life of moving from one blessed event and well-connected relationship to the next. It's a blur of parties, movie openings (a memorable one for "Lord Jim" on the arm of the star, Peter O'Toole himself) , red-carpet events, dinners at 5-star restaurants, expensive gifts, and of course, the parade of the rich and well-connected. She becomes a Disney actress at age 11; as a teenager, she is interviewed (and falls in love with) Tom Wolfe, who writes about her for an American magazine. She becomes somewhat of a fashionista and becomes friends of "Karl" (Lagerfeld) and hip fashion photographers.

Her journey of these early years don't have a feel of a bildungsroman, a memoir in which the author is recounting a youth of promise, looking ahead, ambition, search for self, discovery of one’s talents and desires. It’s quite clear, at least in her telling, that although she may not know her life’s purpose, the search for it doesn’t even come up. It’s like her inner voice cannot be heard above the noise and busyness of her fabulous life. It’s an accounting of her flitting from one high connection to another, one amazing incident, one glittering event or gossip-column item after another. To tell the truth, it got a bit tedious.

There is also a lot of her father’s story here, I think mostly because he’s the catalyst for a lot of the events that happen to her and a lot of her connections.

Her job at Vogue seems to begin another era of her life, and a good nearly half the memoir deals with this career. The job gives her life purpose and meaning she didn’t seem to have before. And although the job is short-lived, it seems to be the great event of her life.

There are moments of deeper consciousness, in the vein of "is that all there is to life?" But the hustle and bustle of her busy, famous, well-connected and complicated life drown that question out, and she continues on her path.

Readers who love to read about the glitzy lives of the rich and famous will enjoy this glimpse into high fashion and high society. Just do not expect anything much deeper. show less

A few bright spots amidst a lot of tiresome name-dropping: some insights into the creative process, a love of color and textiles, a lot of courageous creativity to reimagine a magazine. Otherwise, for me there wasn't much there there. The world of fashion seems even more hollow than I suspected.