Carrie Fisher

Postcards From The Edge

I first became interested in Carrie Fisher's writing after reading an interview with her in Jon Winokur's book The Portable Curmudgeon Redux, which underscored her delightfully biting wit. Postcards from the Edge is a very different animal, however; although there's plenty of wit, there's a lot more bite, and the novel is in fact quite serious, if a little surreal. (It's also, I understand, more than a little bit autobiographical.)

At its core, Postcards is about the many different ways in which people lie to themselves and avoid facing who and what they are. This is made clear almost immediately when one of the major characters, an aspiring scriptwriter named Alex, decides to celebrate being off cocaine for five days by taking some cocaine. In pretty short order (all the while denying that he's back on cocaine) he's taken way too much of way too many drugs, and ends up in a rehab clinic.

The book's protagonist is an actress, Suzanne Vale. Although the initial chapter focuses mainly on Alex's refusal to perceive his drug problem, and his ego-driven pursuit of Vale as a romantic partner (she has no interest in him, and sees him as something of a jerk, which he is), the rest of the book traces Suzanne's own life over the ensuing year or so. She has a fling with a sex-addict of a producer, amidst many philosophical platitudes about relationships and their outlooks towards them (Suzanne doesn't seem to have much of a clue how she actually handles relationships; the producer knows exactly how he handles them - he's only in it for the sex - but his outlook is just another sort of denial, a feeling that admitting the problem is the same as curing it). She attempts to get back into her career, goes through a prolonged bout of depression (or at least extreme listlessness), and finally ends up in a happy relationship with a fine man and is completely uncertain how she feels about this.

Postcards from the Edge is a relentless and often brutal book in its exposure of human frailty, and it rides the ragged edges of psychodrama, surrealism, comedy and absurdity. Although I would by no means characterize it as a masterpiece, it does have a compelling charm - similar to watching a train wreck, but more intellectual. It is enjoyable in many respects, but also rather disturbing. I also suspect that different people will come away from it with very different feelings and takes on it. But, of course, I have only my own perceptions to work from at this point.