Me: Ricky Martin
Perhaps the most interesting moment in Me, the new memoir by singer/actor Ricky Martin, occurs backstage at the 1999 Grammy awards, during which Martin, singing his then-anthem “La Copa De La Vida,” brought the crowd to its feet and the entire music industry to his attention. As Martin triumphantly exited the stage, Grammy host Rosie O’Donnell, who was standing in the wings and unaware that her microphone was live, was heard to ask, “Who was that cutie patootie?”
And, indeed, that is the very question that the reader begins reading Me to have answered—who is this cutie patootie who has shaken his bon bon much to our delight?
But as the Rolling Stones have told us, you can’t always get what you want. And what the reader wants is some insight into the life of the Menudo-singing, “General-Hospital”-acting, Les-Miserables-singing-and-dancing Martin—something that, given his charisma, good looks and talent, to say nothing of his recent revelations concerning his sexuality, promises to make for a spicy feast of a memoir.
What the reader gets instead, sadly, is something more like Melba toast: something dry, stale, and hard to digest.
The problem here is that Martin, in writing his book, seems to equate his readers with fans and not with peers. Thus the reader finds the book to be, at turns, coy, breathless, airless, and vague. It is a memoir lacking in names named, dates given, or locales brought to life.
Like this, the passage in which Martin recalls his 2000 Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters, the interview in which she asked him whether or not he was gay—the question that would start the chain events that would end with his announcing his homosexuality to the world.
Emotional stuff, one would think. And yet: “The interview was conducted in Puerto Rico. After walking a bit on the beach, we sat on a porch for the interview. She asked me questions about my success, my life as a singer, my family, and like the good investigator she is, when I least expected it, she point-blank asked me about my sexuality.
“I responded the same way I always answered the question: I told her that this was a private matter, and it was not one else’s business. But instead of accepting my answer and moving along with the interview, she stubbornly continued to dig. To a certain extent I can understand that she was just doing her job, but she pushed me pretty hard, maybe thinking that she would be able to get some kind of on-air confession from me for the show. I don’t know. But the fact is, I didn’t give her what she wanted.”
In the same way that Walters wanted to get to the truth of his sexuality instead of getting just a pat answer, the reader wants to feel what Martin felt at that moment, with the cameras rolling and Walters in his face. But just as he ultimately gave Walters his much-rehearsed pat answer, he falls back on the same vague coyness here.
Later in the passage, Martin writes, “I felt like a boxer who had just been hit with a decisive punch—staggering and defensive, but already knocked out, waiting to fall. But I did not fall. I don’t know how I did it, but I stayed strong.” And it is here that the reader concludes that that’s as good as it’s going to get, as much access into the inner life of Ricky Martin as we are going to be given.
And yet: “Today I think about how easy it would have been to say yes, and feel proud of who I am. Even though I never really lied, I did dodge the question, and I was very clumsy about it. Now I see that it was so simple, that I was drowning myself in a glass of water, but back then I did not see or live through it that way. It doesn’t matter how I look at it—the bottom line is that it was not my moment. Why? Because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.”
That simple, elegant “It just wasn’t,” speaks volume to what Martin’s book might have been. Had he been able to transcend his Teen Beat background and write the book that was truly his to write, he could have, at once, offered the reader a work of real truth and power, and a tool for young gay readers to use as they learn to adapt in the world. In that Ricky Martin actually has something to tell us—about living a double life, and about the feelings of shame and doubt that such a life implies—it is all the greater a shame that this memoir must be filed under the category of Opportunities, Missed.
By the time Martin reaches his “moment” in his book, the reader has been more or less fully anesthetized by tales of playing video games with fellow members of Menudo and struggling through years of acting on “General Hospital” while never feeling truly as if he fit in with the soap opera’s cast, so that his restatement of why it had never been his moment until it finally was (“I had to go through everything I did and live through all I experienced to arrive at the exact moment when I felt strong, ready, and completely at peace to do it.”) feels both repetitive and rather pointless.
In the final pages of his book, Martin quotes Oscar Wilde in saying, “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing; a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” Then Martin misunderstands Wilde’s point by chalking his use of the word “fatal” to the homophobia of his day. In that Martin’s memoir has all the arch sincerity of a People magazine profile, he would have done well to dig a bit deeper and try to understand Wilde’s point. After all, the fatal flaw of Martin’s book is the sense of sincerity that he has smeared all over it. For Ricky Martin, a little dab of cynicism would go a long, long way.
Few memoirs could be said to be misnamed were they to use the word Me as the title. Unfortunately, this one was.
Perhaps the most interesting moment in Me, the new memoir by singer/actor Ricky Martin, occurs backstage at the 1999 Grammy awards, during which Martin, singing his then-anthem “La Copa De La Vida,” brought the crowd to its feet and the entire music industry to his attention. As Martin triumphantly exited the stage, Grammy host Rosie O’Donnell, who was standing in the wings and unaware that her microphone was live, was heard to ask, “Who was that cutie patootie?”
And, indeed, that is the very question that the reader begins reading Me to have answered—who is this cutie patootie who has shaken his bon bon much to our delight?
But as the Rolling Stones have told us, you can’t always get what you want. And what the reader wants is some insight into the life of the Menudo-singing, “General-Hospital”-acting, Les-Miserables-singing-and-dancing Martin—something that, given his charisma, good looks and talent, to say nothing of his recent revelations concerning his sexuality, promises to make for a spicy feast of a memoir.
What the reader gets instead, sadly, is something more like Melba toast: something dry, stale, and hard to digest.
The problem here is that Martin, in writing his book, seems to equate his readers with fans and not with peers. Thus the reader finds the book to be, at turns, coy, breathless, airless, and vague. It is a memoir lacking in names named, dates given, or locales brought to life.
Like this, the passage in which Martin recalls his 2000 Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters, the interview in which she asked him whether or not he was gay—the question that would start the chain events that would end with his announcing his homosexuality to the world.
Emotional stuff, one would think. And yet: “The interview was conducted in Puerto Rico. After walking a bit on the beach, we sat on a porch for the interview. She asked me questions about my success, my life as a singer, my family, and like the good investigator she is, when I least expected it, she point-blank asked me about my sexuality.
“I responded the same way I always answered the question: I told her that this was a private matter, and it was not one else’s business. But instead of accepting my answer and moving along with the interview, she stubbornly continued to dig. To a certain extent I can understand that she was just doing her job, but she pushed me pretty hard, maybe thinking that she would be able to get some kind of on-air confession from me for the show. I don’t know. But the fact is, I didn’t give her what she wanted.”
In the same way that Walters wanted to get to the truth of his sexuality instead of getting just a pat answer, the reader wants to feel what Martin felt at that moment, with the cameras rolling and Walters in his face. But just as he ultimately gave Walters his much-rehearsed pat answer, he falls back on the same vague coyness here.
Later in the passage, Martin writes, “I felt like a boxer who had just been hit with a decisive punch—staggering and defensive, but already knocked out, waiting to fall. But I did not fall. I don’t know how I did it, but I stayed strong.” And it is here that the reader concludes that that’s as good as it’s going to get, as much access into the inner life of Ricky Martin as we are going to be given.
And yet: “Today I think about how easy it would have been to say yes, and feel proud of who I am. Even though I never really lied, I did dodge the question, and I was very clumsy about it. Now I see that it was so simple, that I was drowning myself in a glass of water, but back then I did not see or live through it that way. It doesn’t matter how I look at it—the bottom line is that it was not my moment. Why? Because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.”
That simple, elegant “It just wasn’t,” speaks volume to what Martin’s book might have been. Had he been able to transcend his Teen Beat background and write the book that was truly his to write, he could have, at once, offered the reader a work of real truth and power, and a tool for young gay readers to use as they learn to adapt in the world. In that Ricky Martin actually has something to tell us—about living a double life, and about the feelings of shame and doubt that such a life implies—it is all the greater a shame that this memoir must be filed under the category of Opportunities, Missed.
By the time Martin reaches his “moment” in his book, the reader has been more or less fully anesthetized by tales of playing video games with fellow members of Menudo and struggling through years of acting on “General Hospital” while never feeling truly as if he fit in with the soap opera’s cast, so that his restatement of why it had never been his moment until it finally was (“I had to go through everything I did and live through all I experienced to arrive at the exact moment when I felt strong, ready, and completely at peace to do it.”) feels both repetitive and rather pointless.
In the final pages of his book, Martin quotes Oscar Wilde in saying, “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing; a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” Then Martin misunderstands Wilde’s point by chalking his use of the word “fatal” to the homophobia of his day. In that Martin’s memoir has all the arch sincerity of a People magazine profile, he would have done well to dig a bit deeper and try to understand Wilde’s point. After all, the fatal flaw of Martin’s book is the sense of sincerity that he has smeared all over it. For Ricky Martin, a little dab of cynicism would go a long, long way.
Few memoirs could be said to be misnamed were they to use the word Me as the title. Unfortunately, this one was.
Perhaps the most interesting moment in Me, the new memoir by singer/actor Ricky Martin, occurs backstage at the 1999 Grammy awards, during which Martin, singing his then-anthem “La Copa De La Vida,” brought the crowd to its feet and the entire music industry to his attention. As Martin triumphantly exited the stage, Grammy host Rosie O’Donnell, who was standing in the wings and unaware that her microphone was live, was heard to ask, “Who was that cutie patootie?”
And, indeed, that is the very question that the reader begins reading Me to have answered—who is this cutie patootie who has shaken his bon bon much to our delight?
But as the Rolling Stones have told us, you can’t always get what you want. And what the reader wants is some insight into the life of the Menudo-singing, “General-Hospital”-acting, Les-Miserables-singing-and-dancing Martin—something that, given his charisma, good looks and talent, to say nothing of his recent revelations concerning his sexuality, promises to make for a spicy feast of a memoir.
What the reader gets instead, sadly, is something more like Melba toast: something dry, stale, and hard to digest.
The problem here is that Martin, in writing his book, seems to equate his readers with fans and not with peers. Thus the reader finds the book to be, at turns, coy, breathless, airless, and vague. It is a memoir lacking in names named, dates given, or locales brought to life.
Like this, the passage in which Martin recalls his 2000 Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters, the interview in which she asked him whether or not he was gay—the question that would start the chain events that would end with his announcing his homosexuality to the world.
Emotional stuff, one would think. And yet: “The interview was conducted in Puerto Rico. After walking a bit on the beach, we sat on a porch for the interview. She asked me questions about my success, my life as a singer, my family, and like the good investigator she is, when I least expected it, she point-blank asked me about my sexuality.
“I responded the same way I always answered the question: I told her that this was a private matter, and it was not one else’s business. But instead of accepting my answer and moving along with the interview, she stubbornly continued to dig. To a certain extent I can understand that she was just doing her job, but she pushed me pretty hard, maybe thinking that she would be able to get some kind of on-air confession from me for the show. I don’t know. But the fact is, I didn’t give her what she wanted.”
In the same way that Walters wanted to get to the truth of his sexuality instead of getting just a pat answer, the reader wants to feel what Martin felt at that moment, with the cameras rolling and Walters in his face. But just as he ultimately gave Walters his much-rehearsed pat answer, he falls back on the same vague coyness here.
Later in the passage, Martin writes, “I felt like a boxer who had just been hit with a decisive punch—staggering and defensive, but already knocked out, waiting to fall. But I did not fall. I don’t know how I did it, but I stayed strong.” And it is here that the reader concludes that that’s as good as it’s going to get, as much access into the inner life of Ricky Martin as we are going to be given.
And yet: “Today I think about how easy it would have been to say yes, and feel proud of who I am. Even though I never really lied, I did dodge the question, and I was very clumsy about it. Now I see that it was so simple, that I was drowning myself in a glass of water, but back then I did not see or live through it that way. It doesn’t matter how I look at it—the bottom line is that it was not my moment. Why? Because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.”
That simple, elegant “It just wasn’t,” speaks volume to what Martin’s book might have been. Had he been able to transcend his Teen Beat background and write the book that was truly his to write, he could have, at once, offered the reader a work of real truth and power, and a tool for young gay readers to use as they learn to adapt in the world. In that Ricky Martin actually has something to tell us—about living a double life, and about the feelings of shame and doubt that such a life implies—it is all the greater a shame that this memoir must be filed under the category of Opportunities, Missed.
By the time Martin reaches his “moment” in his book, the reader has been more or less fully anesthetized by tales of playing video games with fellow members of Menudo and struggling through years of acting on “General Hospital” while never feeling truly as if he fit in with the soap opera’s cast, so that his restatement of why it had never been his moment until it finally was (“I had to go through everything I did and live through all I experienced to arrive at the exact moment when I felt strong, ready, and completely at peace to do it.”) feels both repetitive and rather pointless.
In the final pages of his book, Martin quotes Oscar Wilde in saying, “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing; a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” Then Martin misunderstands Wilde’s point by chalking his use of the word “fatal” to the homophobia of his day. In that Martin’s memoir has all the arch sincerity of a People magazine profile, he would have done well to dig a bit deeper and try to understand Wilde’s point. After all, the fatal flaw of Martin’s book is the sense of sincerity that he has smeared all over it. For Ricky Martin, a little dab of cynicism would go a long, long way.
Few memoirs could be said to be misnamed were they to use the word Me as the title. Unfortunately, this one was.
Perhaps the most interesting moment in Me, the new memoir by singer/actor Ricky Martin, occurs backstage at the 1999 Grammy awards, during which Martin, singing his then-anthem “La Copa De La Vida,” brought the crowd to its feet and the entire music industry to his attention. As Martin triumphantly exited the stage, Grammy host Rosie O’Donnell, who was standing in the wings and unaware that her microphone was live, was heard to ask, “Who was that cutie patootie?”
And, indeed, that is the very question that the reader begins reading Me to have answered—who is this cutie patootie who has shaken his bon bon much to our delight?
But as the Rolling Stones have told us, you can’t always get what you want. And what the reader wants is some insight into the life of the Menudo-singing, “General-Hospital”-acting, Les-Miserables-singing-and-dancing Martin—something that, given his charisma, good looks and talent, to say nothing of his recent revelations concerning his sexuality, promises to make for a spicy feast of a memoir.
What the reader gets instead, sadly, is something more like Melba toast: something dry, stale, and hard to digest.
The problem here is that Martin, in writing his book, seems to equate his readers with fans and not with peers. Thus the reader finds the book to be, at turns, coy, breathless, airless, and vague. It is a memoir lacking in names named, dates given, or locales brought to life.
Like this, the passage in which Martin recalls his 2000 Oscar night interview with Barbara Walters, the interview in which she asked him whether or not he was gay—the question that would start the chain events that would end with his announcing his homosexuality to the world.
Emotional stuff, one would think. And yet: “The interview was conducted in Puerto Rico. After walking a bit on the beach, we sat on a porch for the interview. She asked me questions about my success, my life as a singer, my family, and like the good investigator she is, when I least expected it, she point-blank asked me about my sexuality.
“I responded the same way I always answered the question: I told her that this was a private matter, and it was not one else’s business. But instead of accepting my answer and moving along with the interview, she stubbornly continued to dig. To a certain extent I can understand that she was just doing her job, but she pushed me pretty hard, maybe thinking that she would be able to get some kind of on-air confession from me for the show. I don’t know. But the fact is, I didn’t give her what she wanted.”
In the same way that Walters wanted to get to the truth of his sexuality instead of getting just a pat answer, the reader wants to feel what Martin felt at that moment, with the cameras rolling and Walters in his face. But just as he ultimately gave Walters his much-rehearsed pat answer, he falls back on the same vague coyness here.
Later in the passage, Martin writes, “I felt like a boxer who had just been hit with a decisive punch—staggering and defensive, but already knocked out, waiting to fall. But I did not fall. I don’t know how I did it, but I stayed strong.” And it is here that the reader concludes that that’s as good as it’s going to get, as much access into the inner life of Ricky Martin as we are going to be given.
And yet: “Today I think about how easy it would have been to say yes, and feel proud of who I am. Even though I never really lied, I did dodge the question, and I was very clumsy about it. Now I see that it was so simple, that I was drowning myself in a glass of water, but back then I did not see or live through it that way. It doesn’t matter how I look at it—the bottom line is that it was not my moment. Why? Because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.”
That simple, elegant “It just wasn’t,” speaks volume to what Martin’s book might have been. Had he been able to transcend his Teen Beat background and write the book that was truly his to write, he could have, at once, offered the reader a work of real truth and power, and a tool for young gay readers to use as they learn to adapt in the world. In that Ricky Martin actually has something to tell us—about living a double life, and about the feelings of shame and doubt that such a life implies—it is all the greater a shame that this memoir must be filed under the category of Opportunities, Missed.
By the time Martin reaches his “moment” in his book, the reader has been more or less fully anesthetized by tales of playing video games with fellow members of Menudo and struggling through years of acting on “General Hospital” while never feeling truly as if he fit in with the soap opera’s cast, so that his restatement of why it had never been his moment until it finally was (“I had to go through everything I did and live through all I experienced to arrive at the exact moment when I felt strong, ready, and completely at peace to do it.”) feels both repetitive and rather pointless.
In the final pages of his book, Martin quotes Oscar Wilde in saying, “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing; a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.” Then Martin misunderstands Wilde’s point by chalking his use of the word “fatal” to the homophobia of his day. In that Martin’s memoir has all the arch sincerity of a People magazine profile, he would have done well to dig a bit deeper and try to understand Wilde’s point. After all, the fatal flaw of Martin’s book is the sense of sincerity that he has smeared all over it. For Ricky Martin, a little dab of cynicism would go a long, long way.
Few memoirs could be said to be misnamed were they to use the word Me as the title. Unfortunately, this one was.