I love Carrie Fisher for two reasons. First, she was in Star Wars, one of the greatest films of all time, and—even better—she got to play Princess Leia. Lucky gal.
Second, as she ages, she’s taken on this crazy-fun-old-aunt persona, which I absolutely adore. She’s funny and wise, and that’s why I asked for (and received!) her new book, Wishful Drinking, for Christmas. The cover, by the way, is genius.
The book itself is only slightly longer than a really long magazine article, and it’s pretty evident that it blossomed from her one-woman show. As many reviewers have criticized, it’s more a collection of one-liners than an in-depth memoir. That didn’t bother me so much in this instance, and I rather enjoyed the book. Fisher is witty and revealing and self-deprecating and everything else we expect her to be.
However (total dork alert), the copy errors troubled me! As I was reading it (on vacation in south Florida), I took notes on errors I found. (Shame, Simon & Schuster!) Of course, I lost that napkin somewhere between Fort Myers and New York. So here are two sentences that bothered me.
- Page 104, misuse of em dashes: “The first use of the word was in 1382—so I suppose prior to that there was either no way to put a name to one’s difficulties—or everyone lived in a world of different levels of inconvenience.”
- Page 121, first comma should be deleted: “Without the substances, I had used to distort and mask my symptoms, it was now all too clear that I was a bona fide, wild-ride manic-depressive.”
I had written down a few more examples, of course, but what do they matter? I’m probably the type of person who is preoccupied with these trivial details and would do better in life to overlook such things (except at work, for obvious reasons). If Ms. Fisher were here, she’d probably just say, “Oh, Jesus Christ, Marti,” and roll her eyes. I don’t blame her.
