The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. Ok, so first off, this memoir deals pretty extensively with the sexual abuse of Lidia and her sister by their father. I normally do not engage with media in any form about sexual abuse, no matter how acclaimed, because I find it too disturbing. But, my deal these days is I don’t really read what anything is about in advance, books, tv, whatever, if it sparks even a glimmer of interest in my dead fucking brain, for whatever reason, a blurb or a passing mention somewhere, I pounce on it. It is through this random consumption of any edible brain food that I am trying to jump start my obliterated attention span. I think what drew me to this was seeing somewhere that Yuknavitch dedicates her memoir to anyone who has ever fucked up their life and saw also that Roxane Gay said she read this book in a single sitting because she couldn’t put it down. When I started reading and realized sexual abuse was a central topic of the memoir, I kept going because Yuknavitch’s voice is so absorbing, at least in the first third. It really was hard to put down. Yuknavitch has gone through a lot of crazy shit, the death of her baby, multiple marriages, hitting a pregnant woman with her car while drunk driving, addiction and extreme sex stuff, beyond the childhood abuse. There were parts of this book that I thought were compelling but also parts I found fucking annoying.
For example, while Yuknavitch has experienced many personal horrors, she’s also had seemingly no creative struggle at all, she is someone with incredible connections who experienced creative/professional success after creative/professional success as soon as she put her mind toward writing. And she humble brags about it, which I found quite cringey. She also has her acknowledgement section at the front of the book where all the big name writers are listed so you know right off the bat whose company she’s in—it’s weird. There’s also a long stretch in the middle where we just go through the various famous people she fucks and/or has relationships with on her way up in the literary world. As someone who reads about famous people all the time, I wondered why this bothered me and I think it has to do with more general issues I have around the world of memoir writing.
Like, show me someone whose life is actually fucked. Not someone who published three novels and had the help/support of multiple famous artists before the age of 35. Where are the memoirs of people whose lives are truly fucked in, like, their forties? Not the eat pray lovers who blow up other peoples lives to pursue their bliss, namaste, but someone in the middle of their life who has everything fucked and endured it but is not here for wistful backwards stares at their own forever surmounted pain or to explain to me THE WAY? Maybe no one gives such people book deals but I’m tired of the memoir that is either cry facing it’s way through someone’s shitty twenties only to crescendo to incredible success thereafter, OR memoirs that are just about people with untreated mental health problems who believe their self centeredness is the equivalent of galaxy brain. Yuknavitch’s memoir is more of the wistful surmounted pain sort than an Eat Pray Love worship-me sort, though Yuknavitch clearly has plenty of admirers and Kristen Stewart is making a movie of this memoir now. This is another reason why Wave was such a good memoir, it was so bald faced, unadorned, it was pure grief and memory and the unthinkable, plain, black, shocking in the way such horror could slip into a life. Maybe this is more about my tastes at the moment? In my twenties I ate that Eat Pray Love shit right up. I probably would have loved The Chronology of Water as well, back then, I probably would have taken it as a sign I would one day be on a similar path through my own garbage to greatness.
I don’t mean to harsh on this book too much. There’s a scene where Yuknavitch tries to kill herself by kayaking high that left me with my mouth open. And I don’t deny her pain is vividly expressed, especially considering the extensive abuse she endured growing up, wandering brokenly into an adulthood where she tried anything she could to annihilate that pain. I thought her section on the breakdown of her second marriage was very powerful.
However, (haha coming to terms with how much I disliked this book in real time while writing this review), you’d think someone who was so devastated by her ex-husbands infidelity would be sensitive to marital infidelity! Her third husband is a much younger, married, student in the MFA program she taught. Yuknavitch waves this away by saying “what did you expect? I’m still me.” Lol ok. She disses everyone at the university who fired her for inappropriate behavior while she rides out the end of her teaching contract visibly pregnant with this married student’s baby, as if they’re all dorks and she is a cool rebel. At certain points her personality was really making stink lines off the page no amount of beautiful writing could make up for. The whole last hundred pages was a skim fest for me as she crests the memoir into an operatic high about how she found the perfect man and all her dreams came true and how anyone can make an alternative family with anyone else, though she herself has created a family in the most traditional way there is. It was kinda corny and disappointing. It felt dated.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. I listened to this on audiobook, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to read Carrie Fisher’s works because she reads most of them herself and her laughing at her own jokes and tragedies is worth it. I’ve read all three of her memoirs and though this one is still great, it is my least favorite of them. Her memoirs actually get better and better as she goes along. She doesn’t loose the thread of herself after recounting her childhood, which a lot of other memoirist struggle with. This one is the book version of her one woman stage show of the same name and it felt a little too highly polished. Although she goes into extensive personal detail about a lot of unusual things that have happened to her in a very, very unusual life, many of them awful, there’s like a joke every sentence. This makes sense for a stage show and she was a very witty, quippy person in general, which is fine. But having read all of her memoirs, I appreciated moments, which happen more frequently in her later memoirs, where she lets the hilarity facade go. Fisher is someone, in my opinion, who hides behind humor to an extent, it is the saran wrap over the deep bowl of her sadness. So this memoir left me wanting, like, it was the coal of her life she had polished into sparkly, funny diamonds. Give me the coal lol.
Something that she cracks wise about, which I found disturbing, is that she has no rights to her image being used in Star Wars merch. She’s never made any money from use of her image as Princess Leia. Can you imagine! She recounts all the bizarre and sometimes upsetting things she’s seen her own face on. The worst is a comic con she went to once where she saw an anatomically correct, life size Leia doll on a turnstile where at certain points you could see up her dress to her shaved pussy. Jesus Christ. Thanks George Lucas for approving that and being the sole person making money off it!
Fisher’s openness about her mental health and addiction struggles, as well as about the scaly, fickle underbelly of fame cuts through fantasies about the famous and glamorous. She skewers fame endlessly through all three memoirs. Wishful Drinking goes on a chaotic and somewhat depressing look at Fisher’s vast entangled Hollywood family tree, which just leaves you with a somewhat yucky feeling. She never tries to deny nepotism in her path to fame, and you end up wondering what fame is besides a big nepotism high school filled with people who all fuck each other and who are all stuck with each other and then try to make do.
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This is Sad & Famous an occasional newsletter where I talk about celeb memoirs and biographies I read and as well as various sad media I consume.