Memoir is a charming flight of fancy

Many movie-star memoirs have an air of artificiality.

Some celebrities, eager to preserve their public personas, pull their punches or are less than candid. Still others write in collaboration with a co-author, lending the final product a slightly stilted quality.

Happily, none of the above applies to a candid, engaging new book by Parker Posey. The 49-yearold actress, currently appering in “Lost in Space” on Netflix, has received recognition for a succession of stellar supporting performances in ’90s-era indie films such as “Dazed and Confused” and “Waiting for Guffman,” in which she burnished an appealingly offbeat image.

In “You’re on an Airplane,” Posey — a Maryland native who spent her youth in Louisiana and Mississippi — has the spotlight all to herself. As the title suggests, the book is meant to call to mind the experience of sharing a long airplane ride with the actress — one in which she talks the listener’s ear off about her life, career and Hollywood in general.

The book is written in a stream-of-consciousness, sometimes scatterbrained style, with Posey flitting from one subject to the next.

In the first chapter, the actress shifts from a rant about the size of smartphone screens

(“In the nineties, we had big screens in the cinema and big TVs in our homes”) to a broadside against Facebook, which, with its profusion of vacation and graduation photos, she feels should be renamed “Scrapbookface.”

Other topics include • “You’re on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir” (Blue Rider, 310 pages, $28) by Parker Posey

Posey’s fondness for turbans (which make her feel like “a witch or a genie”) and her anxiety about securing acting gigs after reaching middle age (“I’ve maintained a career and I love to act, but I think every job is my last”).

Equally intriguing are Posey’s memories of specific films or collaborators. She writes reverently of meeting Faye Dunaway on “Drunks”; affectionately of appearing with Anne Meara in “The Daytrippers”; and reverently of being directed by Woody Allen in “Irrational Man” (the making of which is described in detail).

Just as often, Posey wanders into digressions centered on her youth, or the broken wrist she suffered, or her dog, Gracie.

She also finds space for recipes and collage-style illustrations. Such touches might seem trite in other books, but they mesh with the out-there persona cultivated by Posey.

When you think about it, how many books can be said to completely fulfill their aim? Posey’s memoir does just that — it really is like spending time with her oneon-one on an airplane.