Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher, whose mark on this culture will always be Princess Leia, has a new novel, The Best Awful, a semi-autobiographical account of a broken heart and bipolar meltdown. There's an entertaining interview with her at the Advocate. Her husband, father of their daughter, left Ms Fisher for a man. She says, "I’m supposed to be smart. That was really what stung after I got over the personal pain of it. I just really felt stupid, and there’s no way to cover that. ... Most everyone gets abandoned for a younger woman and replaced. Any fool can do that. But this is another kind of fool. When you realize what you’ve overlooked, it’s astonishing." That's not funny, but she does know how to wisecrack: When asked how others reacted, Fisher says, "Everyone treats you like everything is perfectly fine, finer than fine, überfine. There was a lot of that hair-heavier-on-one-side kind of thing." The interviewer clarifies, "The look of concern." "Yes," Fisher replies, "and people saying, 'Well, I wanted to tell you.'"