Crying forever.

 (Originally posted on my blog.)

If you are a liker of comedy, you'd be hard pressed to find reasons to justify why Tina Fey isn't that big of a deal. She and Amy Poehler loomed large for an entire era of SNL, especially in Fey's role as head writer for nine years. Their generation of improv performers cornered valuable TV and movie real estate that used to be reserved only for standup comedians. She also wrote the screenplay of the totemic film Mean Girls, basically informing the vocabulary of every human being in possession of a Tumblr account.

Her schtick as an often hapless, often harried nerd thrust into the spotlight is belied by the ferocious intellect, drive and savvy that Bossypants merely hints at. I'm slightly apprehensive that my post about her 2011 memoir will speak more of her place in culture than the actual content of the book. But Fey herself also deftly anticipates that readers coming into Bossypants are most likely aware of celebrity, and may already have their opinions of her hardened beyond modification.

Every chapter is a mixture of straight up autobiography and riff-filled opinion. She talks about a childhood framed by rules and propriety even as she is drawn to certain oddball communities like theater clubs and lesbian frienship circles. She then traces her beginnings as an improv performer for Chicago's Second City troupe, to getting a writing gig in Saturday Night Live and eventually creating her own show. There are, of course, the requisite pit stops, including her brush with the zeitgeist through her Sarah Palin impression.

It would be easy to dileneate her narrative between childhood-Tina and adulthood-Tina, although I would contend that the difference is actually between her pre-fame persona and her post-fame one.

I enjoyed so many things about this book, especially her hilarious account of a typical but slightly askew childhood. She also has very potent things to say about being an anonymous comic working the improv circuit, including the transcendent moments and instances of pure bullshit. Even the advice and opinion-making rise above the typical, because Fey is a damn good writer. She is the one, for example, who taught me the meaning of a "dark joke." There is also an extended section about the difference between humorists (writers) and improvs (performers) capped by her brilliant declaration that, "If Harvard [Lampoon] is Classical Military Theory, Improv is Vietnam." (You can actually read that excerpt at The New Yorker.)

The parts that I find slight are things that Fey herself would most likely never change. One is the sort of anemic depiction of comedy (and SNL specifically) as a competitive, make-or-break environment. This is particularly disingenuous when there's practically an elseworld universe that seems to exist specifically to push back against the dominance of Lorne Michaels-anointed comedy in the upper echelons of Hollywood. See also: the Judd Apatow pod, the Christopher Guest pod, the Nerdist pod, the primordial soup that birthed Daniel Tosh.

Furthermore, her writing makes it clear that she has at least some feminist leanings, but is undercut by her reluctance to say critical things about her comedy roots. Her writing makes it seem like she existed in a workplace where a very pervasive boys' club mentality happens, but very few people actively enforce it. Having those two things be both true at once is kind of baffling. But I guess being an improv person means you don't throw fellow comedians under the bus.

Barring a less diplomatic picture of the comedy scene, I would have wanted her to double down on the more nerdy aspects of comedy in the vein of the Harvard vs. improv thing. It would've been a more interesting book for me if she delved even more deeply into theory while doing away with the extended riff on rude and incoherent internet commenters, which is frankly played out as a wellspring of humor. I would have also preferred if she waited for time to pass before writing about 30 Rock since she was clearly still in the eye of the storm while she was writing, and thus couldn't approach the experience with a lot of perspective.

This may seem that I have a largely negative reaction to Bossypants, but it's actually the exact opposite. I responded to the book on a granular level, and my nits come from the fact that I've come back to her writing multiple times after the first readthrough. The arc of her career is far from finished so I'm looking forward to another book in the future.

Magisterial is the word the comes to mind when talking about Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel in its literary treatment of Henry VIII's infamous right hand man, Thomas Cromwell. How else do you characterize such a work that takes on not only the entire genre of historical fiction, but also one of the most fiery flashpoints of British history? The novel reframes centuries of received knowledge about a a series of events--Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon and England's subsequent break from the Catholic Church--but the real selves of the people involved are paradoxically so opaque to contemporary minds.

Mantel disrupts so many narrative conceits from the get-go, doing away with the gauzy dialogue and sumptuous interior decoration porn that is the staple of historical fiction. The reader goes so far into Thomas's point of view that it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between what he is thinking and what he is actually doing. Even during highly elaborate scenes in court, the narrative thrums with the tension, not only because of Cromwell's capacity for ruthlessness but also because an entire kingdom's way of life hinges upon a single document from Rome.

Beyond the scandalous lives of powerful people, however, the novel also tackles the cultural shift that society is facing as the Medieval Age gives way to the Renaissance. The tension between intellectual/capitalist class and the religious class for the allegiance of the English people plays out in violent ways that mirrors the turmoil at the very top of power.

The novel ends in a necessarily unsatisfying note, since the story flows into Mantel's next novel Bring Up the Bodies. I haven't read it yet but an avid fan of history will be aware that it will cover the moment when shit proceeded to get thoroughly and profoundly real. That said, I still found Wolf Hall to be a staggering piece of literature.

I love this book, but probably for profoundly me-specific reasons. The idea that a teenager's biggest fear is a mediocre future really hit me in uncomfortable ways. Coupled with Meg Wolitzer's beautifully observed prose, this novel walks a high-wire between a comforting nostalgia vehicle and an existential horror story.

This does not even hold a candle to what Grisham was able to achieve with his first two books, A Time to Kill and The Firm. I've come to the conclusion after reading him through the years that he's basically gone autopilot with his writing and merely checks off plot points these days. Such a shame.