Because I have been in need of lite reading (the spelling is deliberate) lately, I just finished Tina Fey's "Boysspants" and am floundering through Chelsea Handler's "Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me." One thing that is very clear to me is that these are very different books.
Fey's "Boysspants" is a lot of what you would expect. In it, she airs some of her impressive collection of neuroses and talks a lot about her work on Saturday Night Live. But Fey also has some piquant social observations, particularly about mothers in the workplace, that are a little tart going down, and I liked that. Her thoughts on those topics were unexpected, at least for a collection of humorous essays, and a little challenging. Also, Fey (or whomever her ghostwriter was) is a talented writer. In an essay about her father, she comes off as loving and reverent but respectful to the point of being a little intimidated -- quite a hard blend to pull off in less than ten pages. Another chapter about a horrible job she had working at a YMCA in suburban Chicago is funny and poignant with a sharp little twist at the end; not the kind of thing someone without a knack for words could accomplish.
In stark contrast stands "Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me," which I am almost positive I am not going to finish. Whereas Fey's humor is topical, witty and edgy (for a mainstream comedian, anyway), most of Handler's humor involves phrases like "oversexed chimpanzee" and about 20 synonyms for the word "vagina." At the risk of sounding snobby and highfalutin, it's a little juvenile. The idea of the book is that Handler has given the people she maligned in her previous books a chance to return the favor by telling embarrassing stories about her and the effect is sort of like hearing long, drawn-out inside jokes about people you don't know. It's kind of funny, but not so funny it's really worth the effort of reading. Lastly, it's apparent that whatever Handler's comic talents are, they don't extend to a way with words. She's a good storyteller, but she can't make print work for her quite the way Fey can.
1 comments:
I have Fey's book on Audiobook, which is AMAZING because she reads it...which also makes me think she wrote the book. It sounds very much like her (from what I know from her 30 Rock character?). I'm enjoying it, and also loved the piece about her dad.
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