Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses rape, sexual assault, and alcohol and drug abuse.

“She had never really interrogated why proximity to celebrity was so appealing—in fact, the only thing she had ever really questioned was why you would not want to be surrounded by stars.”

Annie’s bedrock belief that “proximity to celebrity” is a self-evident good is the other side of the entitlement and vulnerability portrayed throughout the novel via the theme of Celebrity: Power and Vulnerability.

“Because really, isn’t that what power is? A middle-aged Rumpelstiltskin, jumping up and down, visibly out of breath, swinging on a chandelier, and no one daring to laugh. A grown man so cross with an oil painting of an old lady he looks as if he is about to burst the buttons off his shirt, and nobody daring to suggest he might be overreacting just a little.”

Nikki observes one of Ned’s tantrums. Lloyd invokes the fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin to highlight the absurdity of the scene. The motif of jokes runs throughout the laughter, or lack of it, as part of Ned’s power lies in determining who or what is dismissible as a joke and what needs to be taken seriously. The allusion to Rumpelstiltskin also reminds the reader of Ned’s wealth and the means by which he collects it: He turns undesirable things—the sins of Home’s members—into gold through blackmail.

“It was always weird […] to observe how many of [Jackson’s] own mannerisms found their way on-screen. Or was it perhaps the other way around? That smile, that trademark knowing smirk, for instance—had he always done that in real life, at dinner, or had some director once suggested it to him for a long-ago role?”

During Thursday night’s dinner, Nikki ponders the relationship between Jackson and the characters he plays. Jackson troubles the distinction between “real life” and “on-screen.” As a child, Jess identifies the man as Captain Aquatic, but she is not the only person to struggle to differentiate between the man and his “roles.” Hollywood has created Jackson who often comes across as overly rehearsed to people who meet him. There is no tracing an authentic self, only “trademark” elements of which the authorship is uncertain.