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“Shockaholic”
by Carrie Fisher; Simon & Schuster (176 pages, $22)
———
Carrie
Fisher has done an excellent job of reinventing herself
as ... Carrie Fisher, evolving from ingenue actress and
geek pinup to salty, tell-it-like-it-is writer and
humorist. And as Just Carrie Fisher she has a lot to
say, mostly about her odd but compelling life, and
enough to add a Part 2 to her memoirs.
“Shockaholic”
follows 2009’s “Wishful Drinking,” a bestseller
that Fisher also turned into a one-woman show. The title
is a clue to the reason Fisher says she wrote the book;
a few years ago she started undergoing electroconvulsive
therapy to treat depression. The treatment, formerly
known as electroshock therapy, has improved since “One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” days, although it’s
still controversial and typically only used when all
other treatment methods have failed.
One of
the side effects is memory loss, and this, Fisher tells
us, is the impetus for the book — she wants to write
things down before she forgets it all. And while she’s
writing it down, why not publish it, since people will
never tire of celebrity memoirs, and Fisher is, at her
core, a very good writer who’s able to keep us
entertained.
Fisher
deserves praise for being up front about the therapy,
something scarcely talked about in polite company —
although she’s certainly been open about her
depression and bipolar disorder. She details the
not-so-horrific treatment, from being hooked up with
wires to sleeping it off at home and describes the
result: “And whereas before my brain had felt as
though it was set in cement, leaving me ... I don’t
know ... kind of stuck, the ECT blasted my Hoover Dam
head wide open, moving the immovable.”
She adds
that it “punched the dark lights out of my
depression” and did for her what anti-depression meds
could not. But it comes at a price: her memory, what
most of us take for granted until it develops cracks.
Fisher says she’s on “tune-up” maintenance now,
getting the therapy whenever the shadow of depression
starts to darken her psyche.
With this
as a jumping-off point she mines her past for engaging
stories, jumping tangentially from one to another with
perhaps no real plan in mind, as when friends riff off
of one another’s anecdotes. We hear about Fisher’s
group date with former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and a
pre-second-marriage Ted Kennedy in which the booze
flowed and Kennedy tried to intimidate her — but,
newly sober, she was up for the challenge and held her
own.
About her
relationship with Michael Jackson she has lots to say,
and her attitude toward him seems to be part sympathy,
part bemused onlooker at the questionable behavior of
his hangers-on, those who wanted a little of what she
calls his “shine,” that incandescent stardom.
When
Jackson requests photos of her then-baby daughter Billie
(with ex-husband Bryan Lourd), she finds it a bit
strange, but thinks no malice lies behind it: “No one
could believe,” she writes, “that he was that
innocent or that his motives were innocent. But I
actually did.”
Perhaps
it’s because they shared that rare phenomenon of early
fame that Fisher gives Jackson something of a pass for
his bizarre behavior and takes to task those who may
have taken advantage of him. We may never know what
secrets Jackson kept, but Fisher lends an interesting,
albeit gloomy insight into how ultimately lonely his
life may have been.
Fisher
also details how and why she decided to forge a
relationship with her father, Eddie Fisher, before his
death in 2010. Estranged for most of their lives, she
ultimately reached out to him near the end of his life,
hoping to begin to know the man who was charming, but
hardly around.
She was
savvy enough to understand that with absent, egocentric
parents it’s often the children who have to do the
outreach, and do so with no guarantee of a happy ending.
She got one, though, in becoming his caretaker, his
parent. That, she says, was OK.
“I
became my father’s mother,” she writes. “He needed
me. Finally. Somehow and happily, nothing and no one but
me would do.”
By the
time we get to how she and Elizabeth Taylor ultimately
became chummy — and how Taylor and Fisher’s mother
Debbie Reynolds made peace and became friends — you
realize that these loosely woven stories about the
underbelly of celebrity weren’t haphazard at all.
Ultimately
the book is about being honest with yourself, living
with as few regrets as possible and about making peace
— with family, friends, and strangers with whom you
might have had a grudge. The book is kept aloft with
Fisher’s endless dry wit, although there’s a
melancholy that permeates the writing (knowing what
ultimately transpired with Jackson ramps up the pathos
in that chapter). Fisher may be trying to remind us that
taking the leap and reaching out might be worth the
risk, even without a safety net.
Sure, it
took Taylor throwing Fisher in a pool for those two to
be pals, but all it probably cost her was a dry cleaning
bill.
The first
few pages of the book Fisher does a lengthy
self-deprecating argument for why she’s decided to
extend her memoirs. That really wasn’t necessary. If
she wants to keep talking, we’ll keep listening.
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