When I first heard about all the fuss the news that Fey was apparently being paid five million dollars to write Bossypants had generated, I didn’t understand why so much was being said against someone who would probably give us a laugh riot of a book to enjoy. [break]
For those of you who don’t know, Fey is an American actress and comedian who’s the brain behind the popular television series 30 Rock. She has established herself in a genre that had been touted as an exclusively male domain.
Born in 1970, Fey grew up in Pennsylvania where she had her awkward years as a child that included experiences such as being mistaken for a boy in a supermarket. During high school, she developed a love for performing and joined a local summer theatre program where she took solace in a new group of friends, all of whom happened to be gay. Fey later went on to study drama at the University of Virginia where she says her Greek heritage made her the most ethnic-looking girl there.
Then, in 1992, Fey moved to Chicago and joined The Second City – a comedy troupe – before finally landing up a job as a writer at Saturday Night Live, only to become its head writer two years down the line. Now, she has her own television show, 30 Rock, which she created, stars in, and produces.
I had huge expectations from Bossypants which I was sure would make me laugh more than reading David Sedaris or Nick Hornby – two writers who can make even the most mundane stuff seem hilarious – ever has. To my utter disappointment, the book left me with a relatively few laughs, an occasional smile or two and then yawning the rest of the way through.
The book is a bit frenetic, jumping from one episode to another, which makes it seems more like a string of magazine articles rather than a memoir. And to add to it, Fey is notably selective about the information she shares and leaves you wishing she had been more candid. While making jokes at her own expense, she maintains an inviolable sense of privacy that’s just frustrating, considering she agreed to pen a “memoir.”
The book defies the conventions of a traditional memoir and opens with a chapter that focuses on a small number of life-defining events – from an unexpected birth to parents over the age of 40 to having her face slashed by a stranger when she was just five years old, the incident which she claims resulted in a form of celebrity and elicited special treatment from adults.
“I accepted all the attention at face value and proceeded through life as if I really were extraordinary.”
And though she has proven she’s one in a million in comedy, her memoir isn’t as extraordinary.
Fey is known for her wit and spontaneity but she wasn’t able to use those traits to the best of her advantage in Bossypants. The humor borders on sarcasm and comes across as somewhat forced – it’s almost as if she’s trying too hard. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes empowering and all the other times just plain boring with some chapters reading like space fillers.
However, to Fey’s credit, a deftly calibrated mixture of her signature self-effacing humor and her knack for intelligent storytelling keeps this “memoir” from being an otherwise tiresome and self-important account of a celebrity’s rise to fame and success.
Fey makes some good points about women in comedy and about comedy in general, and also about women in general. She’s smart and funny, and wise enough to disguise some truths behind jokes. Though you’ll have to work hard at deciphering those and figuring out what exactly she means.
The interesting bits are mostly the biographical ones: the snatches of behind-the-scenes life at Saturday Night Live, excerpts from annotated scripts and peeks into the gestation of 30 Rock. The best part is the poem “A mother’s prayer for its daughter” that will strike a chord with mothers and daughters alike.
“When the Crystal Meth is offered,
May she remember the parents who cut her grapes
in half
And stick with Beer.”
It’s bits like these – and there are quite a few – that keep you from shoving the book under your bed and forgetting all about it. Though the book outlines Fey’s life at various stages, Bossypants is not a book about feminist roles. The cover picture of Fey clad in a bowler hat with a man’s body and hairy arms pretty much defies that right from the start.
From a writer whose forte is sketch comedy, it’s a decent attempt to tell a story. It’s just that sketch comedy in a book format fails to keep you hooked for long. Or maybe, I just had high expectations from her after 30 Rock. Or did 30 Rock gain such popularity because of Alec Baldwin and less because of Fey, as Fey herself keeps reiterating? After reading Bossypants I’m seriously mulling over that.
Title : Bossypants
Author : Tina Fey
Genre : Memoir, in English
Publisher : Reagan Arthur Books
Pages : 250, Paperback
Published : January 29, 2013
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