Wishful Drinking
by Carrie Fisher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carrie FisherEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-02
ISBN: 1439102252
Number of pages: 163
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of Wishful Drinking
Book Review: Half-Baked (At Best) and REALLY REALLY Unworthy
Summary: 1 Stars
Unfortunately, I can't give Carrie much for this effort. Not much at all. It's almost shocking, how throwaway and weak this very meager "memoir" is. Fisher proved, with 'Postcards from the Edge,' that she can write with a great measure of fresh wit (or was that merely great editing, so loooong ago?), but this book seems written with palpable disinterest in...HERSELF. Where's the wit? Her turns of phrase, when she tries to turn them, are bland and unconvincing. Even her one-liners are generally awful, e.g. "Well, if the Enquirer has become your standard of living, you're in a lot of trouble!"
Whah? That's like writing, "If your car breaks down in the Ozarks, you're probably going to meet some scary hillbillies!"
Ha.
Sadly, this is typical of the humor in Carrie's new work. Obvious and drab. As some reviewers have noted, it does indeed seem as if she phoned-it-in, as if she wrote this on the back of a grocery list while watching a Wolf Blitzer marathon on CNN one afternoon. I'm more than a little astonished, to be honest. She got paid for this? This is considered "quality" in Hollywood and in literary circles in New York?
Who am I kiding? Of course it is. That's the problem.
Carrie's anecdotes are sometimes interesting (sure they are--she grew-up with movie stars and became Princess Leia and had Hollywood adventures). But her writing (here) is so poor, lazy, and lacking in verve that even the best anecdotes seem blah, or forced. She sprinkles exclamation points at the end of sentence after sentence, like a schoolgirl desperate to fake or manufacture some excitement in the tedious essay she's barely bothered to craft.
Fisher uses "really, really" a lot. Disturbingly so. In fact, so many, many things are "really, really" this or "really, really" that...the astute reader just, really, really, you know, like, can't help feeling bamboozled. A grade-school teacher wouldn't buy that sort of evasive maneuver in a What-I-Did-This-Summer paper, and you shouldn't buy it in a hardcover "book" by a so-called professional. For over $25.
I'm sorry: everything seems to fall flat in this ill-advised endeavor. Even Carrie's behind-the-scenes recollections of hijinks on the Star Wars set, the marriage to Paul Simon, rehab, and her eccentric parents lack moxie. It's almost as if she's been hanging around with far too many non-witty sycophants and, now, their mediocrity, their lack of talent has rubbed-off on her own wit (or witlessness, in this case). The layout of this disaster says it all: the print is oversized, the text almost double-spaced, and even then it all adds-up to barely 150 pages. There'd be about 80 pages, if this were typically formatted. This book was not worthy of an expensive, ripoff hardcover-edition for many reasons; its glaring pithiness is just one of them.
The truly unfortunate thing is that Debbie's Daughter could have made this something special. She could have trained a genuinely keen eye and wicked wit upon the juicier, quirkier events of her life, but I have to wonder when mainstream critics remark that this book is full of "razor-sharp" wit. What? What a scam. The reader couldn't get a paper-cut on the pages of this book, to say nothing of the sharpness of the material. But, audiences for all kinds of work--from sitcoms to cinema to books--have become used to blatant mediocrity. People "laugh" at even the most watered-down bilge these days.
This actually saddens me for the author. I feel for her emotional disorders, but presented in this manner, sympathy only goes so far for a Hollywood brat. To her credit, Fisher does realize this and does at least a little self-deprecating amid this mess. In all honesty: as a reader and fan, I'm not taking pleasure in slamming her latest, but I did spend the dough on the book, I probably couldn't afford it, the book stinks, and I know Fisher can do so much better. Mind-bogglingly better. To recount embarrassingly private personal and familial anecdotes is shaky-ground, to begin with. To recount these things poorly and without verve amounts to a serious misfire.
To be fair, Carrie manages a few very amusing "bits" in the book. For example, she tells an initially bland story about boring old George Lucas's theory about lack of underwear in space (because underwear could asphyxiate you in zero-gravity) and then she very playfully insists that, after her own death, friends must tell the papers that--no matter how she dies--she "drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra."
That's the kind of wit and creativity of which she's capable, and which should have dotted this entire book. It's not there. Indeed, one gets the distinct feeling that she wasn't all that excited about writing this in the first place, and ostensibly did it for money. Ugh. Well, she got some of mine, I'm sad to report. My point is that, even if she did toss-this-off for money, she still should have done her best. 'Wishful Drinking' is light years from her best, and presumably her stage-show is better as a chatty, banter-piece. It had better be better.
I hope Fisher directs her energies toward a truly worthy new novel--something that requires actual work and which results in something fit to purchase. I also hope that people (pubbers, editors, readers, agents, etc.) start being honest with privileged writers and stop allowing them to produce crap and pretend it's publishable. Carrie Fisher has talent and is capable of fine work, but (at least for me) is now in the position of having to prove it all over again. Big time. Come on, Carrie--you've got a classic in you; get back to the grindstone. Reader, do yourself a favor and leave this one alone, if only out of respect for Fisher and her clan. If sheer prurience dictates otherwise, wait until this ends-up in the bargain bin. It will.
Summary of Wishful Drinking
Finally, after four hit novels, Carrie Fisher comes clean (well, sort of ) with the crazy truth that is her life in her first-ever memoir. In Wishful Drinking, adapted from her one-woman stage show, Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of "Hollywood in-breeding," come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen.Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It's an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty -- Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher -- homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.
Wishful Drinking, the show, has been a runaway success. Entertainment Weekly declared it "drolly hysterical" and the Los Angeles Times called it a "Beverly Hills yard sale of juicy anecdotes." This is Carrie Fisher at her best -- revealing her worst. She tells her true and outrageous story of her bizarre reality with her inimitable wit, unabashed self-deprecation, and buoyant, infectious humor.
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