THE FRY CHRONICLES
Stephen Fry
Michael Joseph, $46, hbk
The lugubrious face of the British writer and actor Stephen Fry is frequently found staring out of our television screens these days; I think at last count there were at least three programmes featuring his various talents - the wonderful Blackadder, the trivial Q1, and a documentary on journeying through the United States.
He certainly has the appearance of an easy familiarity, an avuncular nature and self-deprecating persona.
This second volume of his autobiography tells quite another story, however, of a brilliantly talented young man beset with doubts on all fronts, not the least of them being those of his natural gifts.
The first volume published a dozen years ago, the curiously titled Moab is My Washpot, told a horrifying story of an abnormally dysfunctional child, brought up in a sound, loving, middle-class family, but developing into a recidivist truant, thief and suicidal teenager who eventually found himself in prison for his crimes.
The story this latest volume tells really is astonishing for Fry - obviously an exceedingly bright character with a near-photographic memory - emerged from jail and shortly thereafter won a scholarship to Cambridge University where he graduated with an excellent degree in English.
The Fry Chronicles carries his story up to the age of around 30 and covers the Cambridge period and his seamless arrival on first, the British stage and television screen as an actor and especially as a scriptwriter, and later as the writer of a musical that ran for years on Broadway and in London.
In short in the space of not much more than a decade Fry went from jailbird to university student, successful graduate to millionaire "theatrical" with fingers in many pies.
It was a wonderful life - no doubt of it - and if you know anything about British theatre you'll recognise many of the names; for example Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson were Cambridge contemporaries and fellow thespians, Rowan Atkinson a close friend.
But if you think this memoir is like so many others - essentially a list of famous names and deeds - you'd be quite wrong. I've never read an autobiography quite so self-lacerating as this.
It's well-known Fry has had life-long problems with a particularly awful brain disorder but this book discloses aspects of a disturbance of personal equilibrium of colossal proportions.
Unfortunately to my mind his constant referral to his perceived failures unbalances the book.
There have been so many remarkable successes in the way the cards have fallen in his life it is something of a tragedy that he evidently cannot accept his good fortune without looking for what might be hiding in the shadow in the corner.
Readers might also find the prolix nature of his prose takes some getting used to.
It is, I must agree, a most beautifully written narrative - but Fry never lets a simple sentence do the work. That surprises me because he is such a good scriptwriter, a profession where no word can be wasted.
Still, this is one of the better autobiographies around from the starred quarter of theatre and television land. It is also a book written for adults, by the way.
You might be left wondering, after pondering the vast gap he depicts between the reality of his life and the successes that have come his way, how he still manages to get up in the morning.
- Bryan James is the Books Editor.
