Writers reflect on the legacy of actress Carrie Fisher, who died yesterday at age sixty after suffering a heart attack last weekend. At the Huffington Post, Claire Fallon writes that Fisher “could easily have gone the way of many one-time it girls . . . only remembered as a young Princess Leia. Instead, she carved out a unique path for herself, including a successful and acclaimed career as a novelist and memoirist.” At the New York Times, A. O. Scott highlights the “12 dimensions of meta” present in Fisher’s one-time role on 30 Rock as Liz Lemon’s career idol. BuzzFeed looks to Fisher’s 2008 memoir, Wishful Drinking, for the author’s idea of what she wanted her obituary to look like. After an on-set conversation with director George Lucas on the mechanics of undergarments in space, Fisher wrote, “No matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”
At the New Yorker, Megan Mayhew Bergman explores actress Marlene Dietrich’s expansive library, much of which was donated to the American Library in Paris after her death in 1992. Throughout her collection—which includes numerous books of poetry, the works of Goethe, and her own biographies—Bergman observes many pages still marked “with small ‘X’s and with sheets torn from a notepad with a stamped red directive: Don’t Forget.”
Watership Down author Richard Adams died last weekend at the age of ninety-six.
The Washington Post has committed to hiring “dozens of journalists” in the next year. According to Politico, CEO and publisher Fred Ryan said that the company “looked at what succeeded . . . in 2016 and made investments there.” An exact number of hires has yet to be released.
Former New Republic editor Jason Zengerle will join the New York Times Magazine as a contributing writer. Zengerle will also continue in his role as GQ’s politics correspondent.
Investigative journalist Jason Leopold and Ph.D. candidate Ryan Shapiro are suing the CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for ignoring their Freedom of Information Act request. The pair is attempting to locate any records related to possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.