Monday, March 19, 2012

Tina Fey gives me cheap laughs.

Book: Bossypants
Author: Tina Fey
Published: 2011 (Little, Brown)
Pages: 275

"Who doesn't like Tina Fey?" could be the subtitle of this book. Based on the reading I snatched during my lunch breaks by picking this up in the campus bookstore without actually buying it, I will attempt to answer.

  • People who truly believe that women can't be funny. (I picture these guys as old-fashioned clockmakers holding Humor Cogs and shaking their heads regretfully at broken ladies.)
  • People who are disappointed at how normal and good Tina Fey's life has been and are probably just jealous that this disproves the theory that one has to have a shitty life to get any material from it. 
  • People who have refused to watch SNL since the 1970s because they say it went downhill right after that. 
Fey's very good at making fun of herself in a way that brings her down to hardworking everylady level. She loves her life and gets deprecating laughs out of the awesome bits, which makes her more human, and sarcastic enthusiasm about the stressful bits, which show how much she secretly likes them. She's also excellent at inserting one-liners into good advice to break up the earnestness just when it starts to get a little weird.

She is still a TV writer, and that shows in the bounciness of her prose, like it really wants to come out of her mouth instead of stay on the page. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that probably helped me read this faster, an essential part of the stealth read strategy. I feel like Fey would understand the maybe-not-completely-kosher habits of a reader/writer with a day job and make fun of them before joining in with a giant sandwich. 

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