I got this book for 50c at a library that was selling off old books. I enjoyed Wishful drinking well enough. Though Fisher's self-From this blog post.
I got this book for 50c at a library that was selling off old books. I enjoyed Wishful drinking well enough. Though Fisher's self-deprecating shtick would I suspect have become annoying had that book been much longer, the combination of verbal wit, jokes and frankness, and a willingness to own her mistakes and weaknesses -- and also own the growth they had induced -- was on the whole quite entertaining and at times insightful.
I cannot say this book is as good. It is funny in places. It is in fact very odd and left me feeling somewhat icky, as if I had done something a little sordid just by reading it.
This review is largely about what the book is and is not; not necessarily whether it is good or bad, but whether it is what a reader might expect it to be, which they may find useful if thinking about reading it.
First, a warning. Yes, it contains diary entries from while Carrie Fisher was working on Star wars. But, and it is a big but, none of them actually tell you anything much about the movie, its history, creation and so on. What they are is the self-analysis, self-flagellating, self-critiquing of a Carrie Fisher who was trying to work out what she wants, and why she (feels like she) loves Harrison Ford when he was not actually enjoyable to be with and never going to stay with her.
Fisher is 19, 20 years old. Ford is 35 and looking for some physical pleasure while away from wife and kids filming. The book rather suggests that he initially misreads Fisher's worldliness, assumes she is able to have some fun and let it go at that, then later realises that she's not that experienced, and is rather hooked on him, which troubles him but he allows it to go on. She cannot help falling in love in the intense and sometimes hopeless way that we do when it's the first or second time, and berates herself over her lack of wisdom but does not/cannot walk away.
In other words, we're looking at a young person's deeply personal diary, that they are writing as a coping mechanism at a confusing and intense period in their life.
Even though that very person decided to publish these words, even though they bracket them in words they wrote at the age of 60, when they could be expected to know their own mind, it still, to me, feels invasive reading this stuff.
I mean, it has an honesty that you rarely encounter, in an oversharing kind of way. Can anything be more cringeworthy than teenage diaries? Would you want your teenage thoughts, poems, crushes and insecurities printed and distributed? Carrie Fisher did, it would seem. That could be seen as brave. And if you are a male novelist who wants to write a young articulate female character, it might be useful research. But by reading it I kind of feel complicit in some kind of bad decision. Like I let my friend drive drunk.
The material in the book before the diaries kick in starts off a lot like Wishful drinking; anecdotes, context from the times, that sort of thing -- quite entertaining. Then Ford starts to dominate the narrative, and it veers off into self-analysis, and then the diary entries come in, and then we get a grab bag of stuff about times since, including a long discussion of signing photographs for money.
The central scene, in a way, is shortly before the diary entries start. They are having a party, and Fisher, seemingly the only young woman on the scene, is first pressured into getting drunk, then almost carried off for possibly illegal purposes by large male members of the film crew, then 'saved' by Ford who then snogs her in the taxi, which leads to their first night together.
It is a long way from insights into how a beloved movie got made.
So it is a slightly odd grab bag with an awkward kernel that might not be what you expect based on the cover blurb....more
This should really be called My Life With Peter Cook. Because it is the autobiography of his first wife, though focusing on the years of their marriage, not a biography of Cook. As a result, he is a huge presence in the book, but not the centre of it. Wendy is the centre. This is not a bad thing, except that it may not meet readers' expectations, and I think this is reflected in reviews on GoodReads and places like it. Hence my comments about the title (though it's easy enough to see why the title was chosen -- Peter is why you buy the book).
It is actually a quite interesting book.
Why?
Exactly because Peter is why you buy the book. It is a glimpse of being at the edge of great fame. Wendy met an incredible range of people (I won't bother to mention all the names), but few were there specifically to see her. She chose (or convinced herself) to be the support person, cooking amazing food, decorating houses, raising children. But all the time she was aware that Peter was why she was there. Peter paid the bills, Peter opened the doors, and Peter shut the doors and sometimes refused the pay the bills..
One thing it does I think better than other material I've read about Cook is evoke the way it was to live, rather than perform or build a career. The book is not about acting and writing, it's about dinner parties and finding houses and trying to find meaning in a life built around someone else -- someone who often had other things, including women, on his mind. We get stories of infidelity on both sides, a lot of pages trying to work out what made Cook the way he was, and quite a bit of gardening and at least one useful recipe. Dudley Moore comes out quite well, if equally unsure about what he wanted from life, and it's hard not to think that he would have liked to keep working with Cook, but simply could not and was smart enough to get out.
Wendy wonders what she could have done differently, tries to justify affairs, paints thumbnail portraits of their many acquaintances, and generally does a very nice job of placing Cook's work as a comic in the context of the times and of his family.
He comes across as unmoored -- as a man who did not really know how to be happy. Restlessness was a strength early on, but once security and fame had been achieved, the restlessness remained but the goals that directed it vanished, one suspects. Now and again in later years, when he was moved -- directed -- he could do great work. The impetus might come from criticism (he famously wrote 'Entirely a matter for you' in response to a comment that the show he was doing was tired and lacked bite), or a simple desire to exert himself, to prove something. But that did not happen regularly; for example, he at one time desperately hoped he would be employed to do an advertising campaign because then he would not have to work for a year -- his ambition was to not have to work. I guess it's a fine line between being able to do just what you want, and doing nothing. Constraints are essential, I think. And he had few, either coming from outside or from inside.
The book includes her opinion that Cook chose darkness. That is one I largely agree with (at least, he went there for a time). Derek and Clive (which she does not mention, it happening after their timer together) is not two men hilariously busting through stilted conventions, as some have written. It's two men mumbling rude words and hunting around in the filth, largely unsuccessfully, for jokes. I mean, it did break barriers (and it is remarkable just how far from the upright 50s Cook had come by the mid-70s), but for what? I don't mind that that stuff is rude; I mind that it is mostly not funny. Cook was smart enough he could have become a Swift for our times. He chose otherwise, and I hope he had fun.
Don't read this book if you want Peter at the centre. If you're interested in fame as a thing, the 60s as a time, Beyond the Fringe and the satire boom as a phenomenon, and how people cope or fail to cope when their lives are entwined with such things, then it's worth a look.
It is essentially Wendy's life with Peter Cook, not a life of Peter Cook.
Oh, and I wish it had more dates. Often I was wondering what year we were up to, then the book would mention the John or Bobby Kennedy assassination, say, or the Cuban missile crisis, and that would locate it in time for a few pages.
The stories aim at ... well, not at thrilling with endless action or suspense, They are about capturing moments in a life, moments that either show a stage or show a transition, or, in the last one ('One warm Saturday’), a might-have-been.
Free of the need for a through-plot, the author can focus on evoking places and memories, feelings. At this, the book is successful. A poet’s eye for a telling detail, arresting metaphor or image; these are the book’s main strengths. The likeability of young Dylan is not -- not that he is especially unpleasant. Indeed, he often simply is, which is to the book’s credit; it seems free of axes being ground or morals being propounded,
Thomas writes a nice sentence, His characters are drawn effectively and economically. Howsoever that may be, the end of each vignette is an opportunity to put the book down and not pick it up again. Unless the little details of Thomas's life and the puzzle of working out what in the book is a real detail are of interest, the book is not compelling in the commercial fiction sense. It is easy to read, striking in places, and interesting enough. I did not rush through it, but read another story when I felt like dipping into the book’s placid, 'black & white photo of my grandparents' kind of world.
Most definitely worth reading. I guess I ought to check out his poems; after all, he's probably more famous as a poet and as the author of Under Milk Wood than as a writer of prose fiction.
Note on the edition: This is the 1958 printing of the 1940 first edition. It is a time-softened, well-thumbed hard-cover, ex-library, and somehow seems completely suitable to this text, which is more redolent of hard covers and newspapers than mass-market paperbacks and airports. I wonder if the format being suited to the feel of the content is really important; I suspect for a book like this, that trades in memories and evocations (and of a time now becoming quite long ago), it is quite important.
Yeah, it's really funny. Reads very much like spoken word written down. Words fly by quickly, often ironic or mordant. It's short, generously leaded, so probably not that many words. It's like therapy bound into a codex and sold.
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The cover of Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.
Fortunately, there's not too much about Starwars, since I am over 12 years old and don't care about it. It's kind of sad how large it loomed in her life. It's often struck me that being an entertainer is a funny sort of thing, from the point of view of fulfilment. Is helping people pass their time away satisfying? I guess the key thing, if you're the reflective type, would be whether you feel that you're enriching the viewers' lives or just helping pass the time until the grave. But what value a laugh or a thrill? People love those movies, probably too much. What's wrong with giving people something that they just plain really like? Nothing.
The book made me think about people with the same mental issues as Fisher but without the cushion of money or the spotlight of fame. I don't know what's worse, but it seems to me she could always afford and find a therapist, so maybe the money and fame might be preferable as a position to inhabit while battling demons. Also, you can write a book about it and people will read it 'cos they've heard of you.
Her story certainly makes a strong case that it would be preferable to win fame after a few years in the real world, rather than spending your whole live in an unmoored bubble.
Funny. Honest. Worth the little time it takes to read it. Probably better on stage, but sadly it's too late for that now. The self-destructive stories in the book take on a darker tone now that they've taken their tithe. Perhaps it's not as funny as it would have been a little while ago...
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