Begging another question: How many people in this world have had two chapters excerpted by the New Yorker?Ī sidebar on the art of improvisation is as close to intelligent self-help advice as you’re going to get, and her description of an early job at a Chicago Y borders on new journalism. Just remember every person you see on a cover has a bra and underwear hanging out a gaping hole in the back”), which comes complete with a very persuasive defense of Photoshopping? But then they ran another piece, one about the lessons she learned from Lorne Michaels. I didn’t know what was up with the editors at the New Yorker - why choose to cobble together a piece about Fey’s mommy anxiety instead of lifting the gorgeously rendered, breathlessly funny chapter on her father, or even her life-affirming treatise on photo shoots (“Don’t ever feel inadequate looking at magazines. Pay them no mind inside lies a collection of autobiographical essays that should (but of course won’t) prove once and for all that pretty is nowhere near as important as funny, and funny doesn’t work without that rare balance of truth and heart.

(Just like, you know, Larry David does.) An excerpt from her new book in a recent New Yorker didn’t help, with Fey assuming the position of agonized career mommy - why do so many people keep asking her if she is going to have another baby when having one is so hard? Fey wonders hysterically, never once considering that these people are Just Making Polite Conversation.īut any concern that Fey, like so many before her, has been ruined by fame is quickly dispelled by “Bossypants,” a book that reminds you why Fey has succeeded where so many have failed - because she is precise, professional and hilarious.Īt first, “Bossypants” appears to be just more of the same - there’s Fey on the cover looking fabulous but not owning it (her airbrushed face is framed by two large and hairy male arms) and the back is filled with fake and self-deprecating quotes regarding her appearance and talent.

Ever since Vanity Fair put her on its January 2010 cover in what looked like a Wonder Woman costume, Tina Fey has seemed in danger of falling for the very canard she has spent a career satirizing: that a woman can “have it all” if she’s willing to lose 20 pounds, show her breasts and regularly remind everyone that, although she writes and stars in an Emmy-winning TV show, she is still essentially a loser who eats a lot of cupcakes.

Tina fey book recommendations