So I’ve gone through a spate of celebrity memoirs lately, which is interesting–because I pretty much never read celebrity memoirs. This binge, though, had a theme.
Growing up, I was a huge Little House on the Prairie fan. I’d read all the books (at least, through The First Four Years), and I adored the show, even though it deviated from the books before it even started–when tiny Melissa Gilbert announced to the camera that the show would be set in Walnut Grove, even if that was from On the Banks of Plum Creek.
Then, in college, I wound up with a set of friends who developed a ritual of watching syndicated episodes of Bonanza, Little House, and CHiPs (I guess we needed a break from TV westerns at that point in the day). We were all struck by how our perception of Melissa Sue Anderson’s Mary Ingalls had changed; while we remembered her as a bland goody-two-shoes, she was much more wry than we had noticed as children. And she was much more likely to punch Nellie Oleson in the face.
Recently I became interested in Alison Arngrim’s Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated. It’s an incredible story, and parts of it are very hard to read, but Arngrim is a lively writer who earns your sympathy–and is, as far as I can tell, much more likeable than Nellie could ever have imagined anyone to be.
Next up: Melissa Anderson’s The Way I See It: A Look Back on My Life on Little House. This one lived down to its Amazon reviews. Anderson was never close to her co-stars; Arngrim clearly found her standoffish to the extreme. And this book is incredibly unrevealing. Between the title and the lack of information (a significant chunk of the book consists of episode summaries), I can only assume that Anderson felt like she had to write it. It doesn’t even have the personality she showed as Mary. The most interesting thing? The episode summaries are in narrative form, and incidents from Anderson’s actual life are written like a script.
Finally, I read Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale. It wasn’t as strong as Arngrim’s, but Gilbert does seem to have a fair amount of self-knowledge, so it was an interesting read.
So what am I reading now that I’ve finished Melissa Gilbert’s memoirs? Why, Rob Lowe‘s, naturally.
From a fellow Little House on the Prairie books fan, thanks for the interesting review! Not so much a Rob Lowe fan, but nonetheless, I’m looking forward to the review.
I wasn’t for a long time, either, although I have liked his more recent work. But so far I have to recommend his memoirs. They’re very well-written, and he’s very revealing about what it’s like to be driven to act. And, interestingly, his take on his relationship with Melissa Gilbert seems very different from hers, at least at the point I’m at.
Little House was one of the only TV shows my parents allowed me to watch! I haven’t seen it for a long time, but it would be really interesting to read these memoirs. I especially loved Melissa Gilbert, but more when she grew up than when she played Laura.
Visiting from SITS…congrats on your SITS day!