MADreads

Leia, we hardly knew you

February 18th, 2009 Katie H.

It’s apt that Carrie Fisher’s new memoir/one-woman show Wishful Drinking features her iconic image of Princess Leia on the cover.  Just as Leia occupied a galaxy long ago and far away, the real Carrie Fisher knew only one world from birth, more bizarre than any galazy occupied by wookies and giant mobster slugs–the world of a Hollywood daughter.  It’s the sort of place where normalcy is relevant, and in her breezy account, Fisher makes light of dark aspects of growing up famous.

Before she was Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame, she was Carrie Fisher, daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and the much married singer Eddie Fisher.  Their tortured marriage saga, complete with shoe barons, beauty queens and questionable remarriages (helpfully charted by Fisher) is the source of some of her best material.  Out of this colorful background, Fisher herself doing the normal thing (for Hollywood)–enrolling in drama school, auditioning for a space saga and seriously discussing with George Lucas the ramifications of underwear in space (she was for, he against).  Add in some surreal experiences as Mrs Paul Simon (great for songwriting, bad for a stable marriage), too many drugs and undiagnosed mental illness, and even Cary Grant has to get involved in the effort to save Carrie.

Wishful Drinking, basically a print version of Fisher’s one-woman show, reads as quickly as a comedy routine (it took me about two hours cover to cover).  The impetus for the book was Fisher’s struggles with manic-depression, drug abuse and drinking–all of which she frankly addresses and weaves in and out of her narrative.  Still, for all of Fisher’s off-the-cuff humor and wisecracking one-liners, there isn’t a lot of substance, and little sign of editorial oversight.  Fisher has the material, but Wishful Drinking would be more memorable in a longer-length autobiography.  As it is, there isn’t much to this routine.

Entry Filed under: Memoir & Biography