“Famesick”
By Lena Dunham
Random House
While reading Lena Dunham’s new memoir, “Famesick,” I kept looking at the book’s cover, where you see: the bottom half of a figure in a blue dress and a white pinafore; upturned legs clad in white tights and black Mary Janes; and one flailing arm, with stone steps leading upward, as if the camera captured someone mid-fall (“ass over teakettle,” as the saying goes).
The clothing choices scream “Alice in Wonderland,” I thought; and sure enough, I quickly found Dunham explaining the choice in an Instagram post: “This cover image—part of an Alice in Wonderland series by my friend Anna Gaskell—has spoken to me since I first saw it at ten years old. Back then, it captured the confusion of being a young girl in a big world. Now it means something else: falling down the rabbit hole and wondering what it will take to emerge, seeing yourself tumble upside down and questioning whether the landscape you once knew is still the same one you’ll be returning to.” (This should already indicate Dunham’s skill as an articulate excavator of her own life.)
Having now read “Famesick,” I can’t imagine cover art more fitting. For Dunham, as a young, fresh-out-of-college fledgling writer-filmmaker-actress, catapulted herself into fame (or a Hollywood Wonderland, so to speak) via a cult-hit indie feature (“Tiny Furniture”) and a generation-defining HBO series (“Girls”) — created by, starring, and edited by her. (As a sidenote, I’d never watched “Girls” before reading “Famesick,” so I watched the first season as I read, which made this dual experience all the more immediate and compelling.)
Several serious health issues plagued Dunham, however, as did a relentless drive to do everything expected of her — even if it nearly killed her.
Fans may remember that Dunham collapsed at the Met Gala in 2017 — she’d barely been eating, largely due to pain from endometriosis — and before that, she’d had multiple surgeries (that never seemed to help) and published an essay collection (“Not That Kind of Girl”) that caused an online firestorm. Why? Because Dunham revealed in one piece that she, as a sexually curious 6 or 7 year old, bribed her toddler sister to experience a kiss on the lips, and also studied her sibling’s genitalia. Dunham’s discussion of the resulting controversy in “Famesick” reads angry and defensive, but this seems at least partly because of the family rift that it intensified.
For Dunham’s TV fame, in that moment, had already alienated her sibling, who was transitioning from being Dunham’s sister (Grace) to a brother (Cyrus). Dunham writes, “It wouldn’t be until much later that we found our way back to each other, the words to describe how the outside reality had shifted our bond, how the attention of people we never wanted attention from had sent us careening away from each other. When the book came out, he was not even himself yet — I was only beginning to understand the person standing in front of me when he no longer wanted to be near me at all. It didn’t help that the book incident was the beginning of a long cycle of publicly erring and apologizing, erring and apologizing, something I attempted because — contrary to what some believed — I never got into this to offend anyone. I did it to connect.”
This is the awful gift of receiving so much media attention as a famous young artist: everything you say and do — at a time when your frontal lobe isn’t fully online — gets dissected and affects not just you, but those closest to you. (See also Dunham’s 2017 public defense of “Girls” writer Murray Miller, who was accused of sexually assaulting a teen actress — a statement Dunham later walked back and apologized for. She discusses the incident at arm’s length in “Famesick,” with what feels like an implied wince.)
And while the stories about pitching, casting, writing, filming, promoting, and editing “Girls” are fascinating — who among us can imagine having complete creative control of an HBO show at age 23?! — Dunham’s tale, and life, reaches a boiling point after the show ended in 2017.
Her longtime relationship with musician Jack Antonoff was nearly concurrent with “Girls”’ run, from 2012-2017; but while Dunham suffered more intense health crises and strained to figure out what to do next in her career, the two broke things off. Dunham’s chronic pain caused her to develop a pill addiction, and in early 2018, she opted to have a hysterectomy, despite her longtime wish to be a mother. (She later tries to freeze her eggs without success — another devastating blow.)
Dunham then gets involved in an unhealthy relationship with an alcoholic; does a stint in rehab; and has a professional and personal break-up with “Girls” showrunner Jenni Konner, whom she considered one of her closest friends. (Like Dunham, though, I began to feel at sea and restless during this section of the book.)
Eventually, though, Dunham finds her way back to creating her art — with projects like the TV comedy series “Camping” and the film “Catherine Called Birdy.” And although she made headlines when she married British musician Luis Felber in 2021, the relationship goes unmentioned in “Famesick,” ending instead with a story about a fine-enough relationship that goes nowhere.
Why? Perhaps to avoid the happy ending marriage trope we’ve come to expect. But it also suggests that while many struggles are behind her, Dunham knows all too well that there will be more. As she notes in one haunting sentence, “I have loved being a woman, but I have hated operating the equipment.”
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