You're on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir
Ratings9
Average rating2.9
This memoir is certainly as weird as she is. She starts with the conceit that you're sitting on an airplane next to her hearing her story, but then only sticks to that for a little while. I enjoy her voice so I liked listening to the audio, but she added in lots of sound effects to go along with the conceit that were distracting. The book itself has great 90's zine style pictures, but overall she didn't edit this in any narrative way, despite having 3-4 editors thanked, so it veers everywhere and includes recipes and other ephemera. She also calls it self-mythologizing, which is true in that she doesn't analyze her choices or relationships, and tells stories about Louis C.K., Woody Alan, & Ryan Adams with no critical analysis, in fact directly stating that Woody and Soon-Yi are great together....so that's all pretty gross. She also comes across as pretty unlikable - rude to service workers, non-apologetic about accidents she caused, both using and then complaining about her fame - and whether that was intentional or not, or just part of the self-mythologizing, is anyone's guess.
Fairly interesting memoir, with nothing chronological about it. After reading some other reviews, I wish I had listened to the audio version–seems like it was more entertaining. Without sound effects, I kept forgetting we were supposed to be on an airplane. Also, weird to read about Woody Allen and Louis C.K. Just weird.
First of all my Parker Posey fan status is: moderate, and I think you might need to be fan status: super and/or actually related to her to really click with this. Her schtick is that she's sitting next to you on an airplane and just chatting about her life, which facilitates a really casual tone...perhaps too casual, and too prone to assuming I want to know all the details about her home renovations and various yoga studios (this book is seriously like full-on, Yelp reviews for every yoga studio/pottery studio/vegetarian restaurant/co-op/etc she's ever belonged to??).
It's also interesting to me that this book came out in 2018 and she talks about working with Louis CK and Woody Allen in ONLY the most GLOWING terms?? Like including, uncomfortably, mentioning that Woody and Soon-yi seemed to be made for each other??? like girl ok I'm glad you had a good experience working with those men I guess but also uhhhhh
The book is also full of like...weird...collage-style photos of herself?
IDK it was a quick read and had some good celeb gossip but overall.........?