After reading the 2009 novel that I dissed a bit last week, I read Tina Fey’s 2011 autobiographical “Bossy Pants.” Superb, stellar, well-written. Educational, insightful, witty and fun! What more could I ask?
From how she got the scar on her face in kindergarten to how she came to spend four years at University of Virginia “trying to charm the uninterested”; from character sketches of friends and relatives to her overdue responses to mean Internet posts; from the shipboard fire on her honeymoon cruise to how she came to impersonate Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” during the busiest week of her life, …Tina delivers.
I’d not known that after college Tina logged a stint with “Second City,” the Chicago-based improvisational theater. In sharing about this, the author ups the ante by explaining the fundamental principles of improv sketches. So, the narrative made sense while it made me laugh.
Her interview with Lorne Michaels when she applied for a writer’s position on “SNL” is a stitch! Her ruminations on gender issues in comedy writing and acting is priceless. And her self-deprecating depiction of herself as a “little tiny person … running in circles, worried out of her mind” actually serves to portray her as an energetic, in-charge dynamo with a voice that is hers and hers alone.
She cites this posting from a Web site: “Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, bitchy, overrated troll” and then responds: “To say I’m an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair. … Thank you for the post. There’s no such thing as bad press.” Oh yeah, she also suggests it would take the Hubble Telescope to find a certain pair of his body parts.
Having recently watched the first five seasons of “30 Rock,” I found her critiques of its characters and writers quite poignant. As to each, she cites “MVP” jokes and scenes. I was also moved by the way in which she writes of Alec Baldwin and Amy Pohler, of whom Tina obviously thinks the world.
Janet Maslin, in a New York Times review last year, wrote, “‘Bossypants’ [is] a spiky blend of humor, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new generation.” I’ve admired Tina’s work ever since she first showed up on “SNL.” But I now have an abiding appreciation for how this middle-class part-Greek, part-German American from Upper Darby, Pa., forged her way to the top of an almost all-male profession.
Tina’s slick, savvy, unyielding and hard-working, with a down-to-earth quality that fascinates and yet proves she’s all-human being. “Bossy Pants” intermingles discussions of home life and work life in much the same way “30 Rock” protagonist Liz Lemon does. Sharing openly about bearing and rearing her daughter, near the end Tina openly ponders whether or not she’ll have another child while working at such a high level, concluding: “Either way, everything will be fine. But if you have an opinion, please feel free to offer it to me through the gap in the door of a public restroom. Everyone else does.”