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Biography & Autobiography. Performing Arts. Nonfiction. HTML: This international bestseller is an "enormously entertaining" boyhood memoir by the British actor and comedian (The New York Times). Since his PBS television debut in Blackadder, multitalented writer, actor, and comedian Stephen Fry has earned many fans with his idiosyncratic wit. In this memoir, a number-one bestseller in Britain, he shares the story of his youthful years in his typical frank, funny style. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, and criminal conviction to emerge�at the age of eighteen�ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is "one of the great originals . . . That so much outward charm, self-awareness and intellect should exist alongside behavior that threatened to ruin the lives of the innocent victims, noble parents and Fry himself, gives the book a tragic grandeur that lifts it to classic status" (Financial Times). .… (more)
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This book deals with his experiences at school, his criminal tendencies, his sexual awakening
Autobiographies have a habit of becoming either self-glorifying grand narratives inexorably driving the author towards his major achievements, or staid sequences of events of the "and then I did this", however sprinkled with juicy anecdotes and opinions about how everyone else went wrong. Stephen Fry, being delightful, manages to avoid both clichés.
He laughs at linearity and digresses to his heart's content, skipping backwards and forwards with glee. The first time he did it he did not signal it, and it left me confused for a moment; but as the confusion passed I realised how much I love this way of doing autobiography: he holds in his mind at the same time the memory of himself as a boy and the world around him as it was then, and the knowledge of how it all develops. He does not force the one to submit to the other, in a sort of bleak determinism or an equally problematic nostalgia. Instead he is constantly commenting on the construction of the image of the past that he is creating. The opening words provide a good example:
For some reason I recall it as just being me and Bunce. No one else in the compartment at all. Just me, eight years old, and this inexpressibly small dab of misery who told me in one hot, husky breath that his name was Samuelanthonyfarlowebunce.
I remember why we were alone now. My mother had dropped us off early at Paddington Station.
The impression it gives is not one of fact recounted but of the progress of remembering. Interspersed with the memories are philosophical observations, literary discussions (there is some very good stuff about a gay, dandyfied counter-culture in opposition to the ideal of muscular christianity and its heteronormativity. And P.G. Wodehouse, of course.) and some delicious common sense.
The strangest part of reading the book was the oscillation in my mind between absorbing this book as a piece of literature, empathising with the protagonist and thoroughly enjoying myself, and the knowledge that this is Stephen Fry recounting (or at least producing an image of) his childhood. The story of how he was made to see a speech therapist, for example, is very different when you know how wonderfully distinctly he speaks now. The idea that his speech might be incomprehensible is so wildly unbelievable that it somehow becomes wildly interesting. That, and I love trying the tongue twisters. I think I startled my boyfriend by suddenly saying that
Betty had a bit of bitter butter and put it in her batter and made her batter bitter. Then Betty put a bit of better butter in her bitter batter and made her bitter batter better. (103)
I also laughed out loud several times (cue more startled looks), despite the fact that so much of the book is taken up with recounting humiliations and difficulties in fitting in among other children. The theme should make it sad and difficult to read, but it is told in such a way that it is delightful (that word again),even hilarious. There is a story about a dead mole and an evil girl with a donkey which cannot be summarised. And Fry's rants about the horror of not being able to sing had me giggling.
The book also left me feeling that I now know all I ever needed to know about a young gay man's sexual awakening. Not to mention all the stuff that apparently goes (went?) on at public schools. But while I am usually very prudish about this sort of thing, it did not put me off here. Perhaps because of the way it is written. And perhaps because it was all tied up with rants about the evils of sports and physical education. I sympathise entirely. There is the marvellous passage which states that,
you could fuck me with a pineapple and call me your suckpig, beat me with chains and march me up and down in uniform every day and I would thank you with tears in my eyes if it got me off games. (233)
The description of his first love was charming. I am, of course, left with a powerful curiosity as to the identity of this ``Matthew'' (a pseudonym to ``spare blushes all round''), but it doesn't really matter. The idea of this boy, and the description of Fry's subtle approaches are so sweetly endearing I wanted to look up and go "awwww" at people. Homosexuality adds an extra component to the drama of teenage feelings, of course; and it is very interesting to read his thoughts on the strange rules of the public school environment, about what is ``queering'' (and therefore unacceptable) and what is just having sex with a boy (which is fine).
As I said, it ends in his 19th year (if my maths are right). The culmination of this part of his life is really a very shocking and sad one. It ends in a suicide attempt followed by a crime spree and then prison. But even at its saddest, it is an entertaining read. I had tears in my eyes sometimes, but I laughed more. And the book, thankfully ends at an opening up towards brighter things, with his entrance to Cambridge in 1976.
Still, I really hope the second volume, which comes out on September 13 this year, is happier than the first, because while it is entertaining as literature, it is very sad when you realise it is a description of an actual experience of growing up. And, Stephen Fry being delightful, you want him to have had a delightful life as well. Of course, that might have given us as readers fewer exquisite passages. But that thought is somehow morally problematic, isn't it?
What is unusual is that Stephen-the-autobiographer fully accepts that he was horrible, and makes no excuses for it. "Yes" he says, "I was gay and Jewish and borderline genius and suffering from unrequited love". Many autobiographers would add "Therefore I lied and stole and was cruel and generally did my selfish best to self-destruct". Instead, Stephen stresses that these were arguably factors in his remarkable messed-up-edness, but that they definitely weren't responsible for his actions and that he ultimately has nothing but his own character to blame. Does this mean he is refreshingly honest and unafraid of being disliked? Or does it mean he is unafraid of Young Stephen being retrospectively disliked - while strongly emphasising "This isn't me NOW. I'm ashamed of it NOW"? Then again, his unflinching description of Horrible Git Stephen is still mixed with a healthy dose of familiar Fry charm and endearing insecurities. Is he saying, in smug Stephen fashion, "I was detestable, but you love me anyway, don't you?" Which I do actually. It's all very confusing.
So I've decided, I won't care. At the end of the day, this book is moving and intelligent and bloody funny, with amazing language. I love the random tangents as well. Now I'm off to watch QI.
Fry guides us through the joys and torments of his youth in sometimes shockingly intimate detail. The narrative moves effortlessly from a timid boy in knee high shorts to accounts of lost virginity
Not forgetting, of course, the poor dead hedgehog.
The wonder of this book and what keeps it so compelling all the way through is that is is so open, full of emotion and guts. It not just a collection of events but the story the a growth of a personality from the perspective of its person. I have good friends who have never revealed as much of themselves to me as Fry has in the pages of Moab.
The account is engagingly written and, despite the dark nature of some of the content, full of wry humorous observations. Highly recommended.
Fry's rambling memoir also devolves into long non-chronological rants upon such things as Authors he has Loved (most of which I'd never heard of) and How Music Feels, which, as even he acknowledges, is impossible to put to paper. His anecdotal tales were much more amusing and diverting than much of what else he's filled his memoir with. It's almost an exercise in recollection therapy, in which he attempts to understand the psychological motivations for much of his youthful behavior. I suppose it is important to suss out your reasons why when you've been given every opportunity, proceed to make a muck of things, and emerge to be wildly successful, but he doesn't even get to the success and fame part. He ends things just after having "sat his Cambridge exams" (whatever that means) and going to apply to be a schoolmaster. I am aware that further memoirs have been written, and I am interested to know what happens next, but I am somewhat apprehensive that additional writing by this comedic performer will also not be as jocular as I had hoped when picking up this volume.
He here tells a brutally honest account of his growing up and
It is honest, it is funny, poignant and sometimes sad. It is nearly always curious and often confused. But it is never apologetic. Good for you, Stephen.
Fy also opened my eyes to the British public school boy experience and that it's a breeding ground for possible same sex experimentation. Some people swear this is true but I don't know myself - not being familiar with the school system here at all. Anyone have an opinion on this?
Above all, I was very impressed by Fry's intellect and expertise in a variety of topics. He wasn't shy about showing off his knowledge and going off on quite a few tangents in this display. But it is his autobiography and I can't say that I wouldn't do the same if I was writing one! He is immensely honest about his wrong doings but you never find yourself disliking him in any way which is quite an accomplishment and probably why he is so still so well liked today.
Could be two and half or a three but I'll go with three since I now like the guy.
But these are minor niggles. Generally, an entertaining and fascinating insight.
I was most impressed with Fry's
His stories of his first (unrequited) love were heart warming and his tales of boarding school interesting for anyone, like myself, who would have no way of knowing the ins and outs of boarding school life. Especially in a country different from my own
There is something about the way Stephen strings together words in lists that rolls off your tongue in some sort of symbiotic symmetry & the things he goes on about (passion, obfuscations,
The matter of life, growing up & falling in love is all dealt with in the manner I would expect a long lost twin would to his other.
To me, his story is a reminder of that old adage about not everything meeting the eye, & the truth in all fables of redemption.
1) was it honest?
2) did it elicit emotion from me?
3) did I get to know the author?
The answer to those three questions with regard to Stephen Fry's, "Moab is My Washpot" was a resounding yes.
This autobiography takes the reader through
This autobiography was funny, poignant and very real. By the end I felt I knew Stephen Fry. I look forward to reading Part II of his life, "The Fry Chronicles".