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May. 19th, 2008 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
decemberthirtyIt feels like it's been a very long time since I've posted a proper book review. Perhaps that's because it has been a long time. A quick look back at my journal reveals that it's been over two months since I've even posted one of those little improper book reviews that I was writing during the semester!
I had my top two wisdom teeth out on Friday, which meant that I spent a large portion of the weekend lying on the couch, which in turn meant that I had plenty of time to finish reading Moab is my Washpot, the autobiography of Stephen Fry. The same qualities--wit, charm, candor, and a highly engaging voice--that made Moab is my Washpot ideal post-semester reading also made it ideal reading while recovering from oral surgery, and I enjoyed it a lot.
The book tells only the story of Fry's first twenty years, but there is more than enough drama in those years to fill up 350 pages. I found it easy to identify with Fry's portrait of his younger self: a child with high verbal intelligence, but one who is also withdrawn and sometimes painfully ill at ease in the world. Fry is quite open about the unpleasant aspects of his youthful persona, and he freely admits his penchant for stealing and his ugly willingness to manipulate friends for his own ends. Fry seems to have ready access to the emotions of his early life, and he's able to bring to life the strange mixture of pride and shame that his behavior inspired in him, as well as the inexplicable compulsion that drove him to repeat these behaviors again and again. It sounds rather dark, summarized in this way, but Fry tells it with such humor and sparkling language that it doesn't seem heavy. There's some very nice material mixed in as well--for example, an instance when a teacher intervenes at just the right time and in just the right way to save Fry from cruelty and ostracism at the hands of his schoolmates. This event is rendered so lovingly, with such carefully recalled detail and obvious gratitude--it's a glowing moment, and I couldn't help grinning when I read it.
The central event of the book (and of Fry's emotional life, it seems) is his experience of falling in love at the age of fourteen with a boy at his school. This event gets rather a lot of buildup in the book, but then doesn't deliver quite the emotional punch I was expecting. There's emotion there, make no mistake--Fry is lovely when he describes his devotion to and idealization of Matthew--but the whole thing lacks the tension I need to really feel it. This lack of feeling cropped up at a few other points in the book as well. Fry seems very willing to share his emotions with his readers, but less willing to probe or interrogate them. The book favors narration entirely over introspection; Fry covers some unpleasant territory in the book (particularly a self-destructive downward spiral in his late teens) and I can't blame him for not wanting to delve deeply into those parts of his history, but it does leave the reader with odd gaps in understanding...
Stylistically, Fry seems to be trying to keep his prose as close as possible to the tone of his speaking voice, and the result is usually quite readable. There are sentences that seem to get away from him, instances when he injects so many modifiers and qualifiers that the whole thing crashes into the guardrail and becomes a massive adjectival pileup. But those sentences are outnumbered by the ones that are witty or trenchant or self-deprecating or otherwise spot-on. The book is conversational not merely at the sentence level, but also in structure. It's a VERY digressive read. For the most part the digressions were fun, and gave insight into other sides of Fry, but every so often they got in the way of the narrative or interrupted a story that would have been better left uninterrupted.
I feel like I've just pointed out a lot of flaws about the book, but I really did enjoy it. I think a large part of my enjoyment of the book stemmed from my enjoyment of Stephen Fry as the narrator of his own life story. I was absolutely charmed by him. I reacted to this book in a way that was quite common for me when I was younger, but has become quite rare as I've gotten older: I wanted to be friends with him. Seriously, if would be so cool if we could hang out. There would be so much we could talk about! From the frustrations of being a music lover who lacks all musical ability to the experience of searching, as teenaged queers, for the deeply coded hints of homosexuality in Forster and John Knowles... At several points in the book, I found myself thinking that Stephen Fry is exactly who I would be if only I had been born male, British, and 25 years earlier than I was.
I had my top two wisdom teeth out on Friday, which meant that I spent a large portion of the weekend lying on the couch, which in turn meant that I had plenty of time to finish reading Moab is my Washpot, the autobiography of Stephen Fry. The same qualities--wit, charm, candor, and a highly engaging voice--that made Moab is my Washpot ideal post-semester reading also made it ideal reading while recovering from oral surgery, and I enjoyed it a lot.
The book tells only the story of Fry's first twenty years, but there is more than enough drama in those years to fill up 350 pages. I found it easy to identify with Fry's portrait of his younger self: a child with high verbal intelligence, but one who is also withdrawn and sometimes painfully ill at ease in the world. Fry is quite open about the unpleasant aspects of his youthful persona, and he freely admits his penchant for stealing and his ugly willingness to manipulate friends for his own ends. Fry seems to have ready access to the emotions of his early life, and he's able to bring to life the strange mixture of pride and shame that his behavior inspired in him, as well as the inexplicable compulsion that drove him to repeat these behaviors again and again. It sounds rather dark, summarized in this way, but Fry tells it with such humor and sparkling language that it doesn't seem heavy. There's some very nice material mixed in as well--for example, an instance when a teacher intervenes at just the right time and in just the right way to save Fry from cruelty and ostracism at the hands of his schoolmates. This event is rendered so lovingly, with such carefully recalled detail and obvious gratitude--it's a glowing moment, and I couldn't help grinning when I read it.
The central event of the book (and of Fry's emotional life, it seems) is his experience of falling in love at the age of fourteen with a boy at his school. This event gets rather a lot of buildup in the book, but then doesn't deliver quite the emotional punch I was expecting. There's emotion there, make no mistake--Fry is lovely when he describes his devotion to and idealization of Matthew--but the whole thing lacks the tension I need to really feel it. This lack of feeling cropped up at a few other points in the book as well. Fry seems very willing to share his emotions with his readers, but less willing to probe or interrogate them. The book favors narration entirely over introspection; Fry covers some unpleasant territory in the book (particularly a self-destructive downward spiral in his late teens) and I can't blame him for not wanting to delve deeply into those parts of his history, but it does leave the reader with odd gaps in understanding...
Stylistically, Fry seems to be trying to keep his prose as close as possible to the tone of his speaking voice, and the result is usually quite readable. There are sentences that seem to get away from him, instances when he injects so many modifiers and qualifiers that the whole thing crashes into the guardrail and becomes a massive adjectival pileup. But those sentences are outnumbered by the ones that are witty or trenchant or self-deprecating or otherwise spot-on. The book is conversational not merely at the sentence level, but also in structure. It's a VERY digressive read. For the most part the digressions were fun, and gave insight into other sides of Fry, but every so often they got in the way of the narrative or interrupted a story that would have been better left uninterrupted.
I feel like I've just pointed out a lot of flaws about the book, but I really did enjoy it. I think a large part of my enjoyment of the book stemmed from my enjoyment of Stephen Fry as the narrator of his own life story. I was absolutely charmed by him. I reacted to this book in a way that was quite common for me when I was younger, but has become quite rare as I've gotten older: I wanted to be friends with him. Seriously, if would be so cool if we could hang out. There would be so much we could talk about! From the frustrations of being a music lover who lacks all musical ability to the experience of searching, as teenaged queers, for the deeply coded hints of homosexuality in Forster and John Knowles... At several points in the book, I found myself thinking that Stephen Fry is exactly who I would be if only I had been born male, British, and 25 years earlier than I was.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 02:07 pm (UTC)Carol: Do you have any Equal?
Peter: I'm sorry, I'm famous for having no equal.
It's probably funnier if you hear the delivery...
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 11:38 pm (UTC)Is Peter's Friends good? Should I track it down?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-22 05:12 am (UTC)