Funny You Should Ask

Chani Horowitz approaches her first interview with Gabe Parker with preconceived beliefs about celebrity and fame that are explored, tested, and ultimately rectified by the end of the novel. She’s aware that actors and celebrities construct their personas as carefully as they sculpt their bodies and faces, but she believes—or at least jokes in her article—that to begin with, “[they’re not even the same species” (118). She imagines there’s a line that separates very “beautiful” and “charismatic” people from “regular” people like her, and furthermore, that the public polices this line. She’s sure she’s getting dirty looks when she attends the premiere of Oliver’s movie with Gabe and wants to assure people that no, she’s not with him, and thus not violating the “accepted” laws of the universe. The constant interest in whether Chani slept with Gabe demonstrates the public’s obsessive interest in the lives of celebrities and the curiosity to discover whether that line can ever be crossed—whether someone like Chani Horowitz can attract someone like Gabe Parker.

Throughout the novel, Chani grapples with the line between fantasy and reality, blurred by Gabe’s fame. At their first meeting, Chani is attracted to Gabe’s beauty and his otherworldly celebrity quality, confessing that he is her long-time celebrity crush. The shirtless photo of him on her phone signals that prior to knowing him personally, she regards him as an icon or an image to be admired. Ten years later, Chani is attracted to Gabe the man, but it takes a reminder from Oliver Matthias for her to understand that despite his fame, Gabe is subject to the “normal” rules that govern human behavior just like her: He can make mistakes, he can experience addictions, and he can fall in love.

While Chani’s anger about Gabe’s swift marriage to Jacinda Lockwood is ostensibly about him misleading Chani, it also highlights and reinforces her implicit belief that she and Gabe are indeed separate “species,” and that Jacinda, a beautiful and glamorous actor, is the right sort of partner for Gabe. Chani learns this compatibility of Jacinda and Gabe celebrity status is the real reason the two married—a publicity stunt designed to protect and further both of their careers. They shared similar interests and intentions, but they weren’t in love with one another. It was simply a narrative created for public consumption that kept Gabe from fully connecting with Chani, the woman he really wanted.

Both Gabe and Chani struggle to reconcile the disconnect between who they truly are and who the public wants and believes them to be, despite the fact that the public’s fantasies are what ultimately fuels their careers. Gabe wants to be seen and valued as a whole person. He wants the public to be interested in him for his talent, not just for the fantasies about celebrity life they project onto him. He sees publicity as a tradeoff. As Gabe’s sister Lauren teases, Gabe “gets paid a bunch of money to do very little and people want to know about him and his life” (287). While this interest—the “public’s obsession with the private lives of celebrities” (280)—is rooted in their fantasies—it’s also undeniably what fuels both Gabe and Chani’s careers. Chani makes her livelihood by interviewing and writing about famous people, and her original interview with Gabe and the fantasy conjured in the public imagination that she a “normal woman” slept with him is what she has become most known and remembered for in her career. The specter of Gabe’s fame triggers Chani’s insecurities. She struggles to believe that she’s a good writer when what people inevitably want to know are details about her sexual relationship with Gabe. When Gabe supports Chani by reassuring her that she’s a good writer and recommending her books at the Montana bookstore, Chani still wonders how much of her success is due to him. A central part of her character arc sees her coming to terms with her own faith in herself and her abilities.

Gabe’s endeavor to deal with his celebrity boils down to learning to accept who he is and be comfortable in his own skin. He learns to establish boundaries between himself and the public with regard to things that are important to him, eventually rejecting the idea that “tradeoff” of celebrity life gives people the right to every detail about him. He doesn’t want to talk about his dad with interviewers because he doesn’t want his dad to devolve into an anecdote or footnote about Gabe’s career. In the same way, he is dismayed that photos of his second lunch with Chani have gone public, as he wanted them to have time to enjoy one another and get reacquainted without public scrutiny and analysis. Gabe invites Chani to Montana in an attempt to carve out some measure of privacy.

Gabe’s shift in perspective on his own fame reflects the ways in which the line between fantasy and reality skewed his own understanding of self. After experiencing rehab, Gabe develops a different perspective on his fame and his career. In their first weekend together, he told Chani that his roles were his identity: “When I’m in front of the camera,” he tells her, “I know who I am” (241). It was his inability to feel comfortable in his own skin and deal with the pressures of intense public scrutiny that contributed to his alcohol addiction. In the Epilogue, Gabe shares a different outlook on the relationship with his public persona. He writes, “It’s a funny thing when the world thinks it knows you. Or, when you think what the world knows is who you are” (339). After rehab and reuniting with Chani, Gabe has reframed his definition of success, and that helps him come to terms with his celebrity status. By the end of the novel, he has achieved a whole identity that he maintains even when he steps off the stage, and that proves a much healthier way for him to live.