PROLOGUE

Do you remember remembering? It’s what one was formerly required to do, before the Internet, if one was to quote a favorite line from a motion picture or impress others at a family Christmas gathering with a cherished and obscure Steely Dan lyric. Admittedly remembering has fallen out of vogue, supplanted as it has been by Googling. And that may in an odd way be to my benefit. For I have never had the best of memories – and hard living has taken its toll. But nevertheless remembering is what I have herein endeavored to do: remember a life – mine – that has touched thousands. Many anonymously.

Readers may wonder why I’m choosing now – in the last moments before the actual ascent of my career – to pen my celebrity autobiography. Don’t most celebrities wait to write until they are older, more wizened, perhaps even embittered – or at least actually famous? Many may wonder at the possible prematurity of such a tome. Many may wonder in fact who I am!

But what defines celebrity? Certainly, as I have hopefully published this book that you are reading, I am more famous than you, dear reader! Unless you are a celebrity reader, and then in fact you may be more famous than I. But in that event you certainly already understand the nature of celebrity! And so it is really for the other, more ordinary readers, that I must rationalize. And that irks me. For if you’ve picked up this volume from the Recommended Books table at your local chain bookstore – or, as is perhaps more likely, from the 70% Off table – you surely have some inkling already of who I am and are dying to know more. Unless you are simply hoping for the kind of drunken, compromising photographs that round out most celebrity autobiographies (see page 108), or have your lascivious fingers crossed for some sort of lurid video still from a professional pornographic film made before true celebrity had arrived and money was a little tight. The very thought insults me – but you may find what you seek on page 212.

…and there’s more to come, as the paparazzi gears up for a reading of excerpts from I Light Up My Life: the Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography on Friday August 6 at 9:30 pm at Dixon Place, NYC.