More Fool Me: A Memoir

by Stephen Fry

Overview

The British comedian recounts the highs and lows of his wild years: “A gifted writer with a perfect sense of comic timing and anecdote-spinning . . . Lots of fun.” —Kirkus Reviews

By his early thirties, Stephen Fry—writer, comedian, star of stage and screen—had, as they say, “made it.” Much loved on British television, author of a critically acclaimed and bestselling first novel, with a glamorous and glittering cast of friends, he had more work than was perhaps good for him. As the ‘80s drew to a close, he began to burn the candle at both ends. Writing and recording by day, and haunting a never-ending series of celebrity parties, drinking dens, and poker games by night, he was a high functioning addict. He was so busy, so distracted by the high life, that he could hardly see the inevitable, headlong tumble that must surely follow . . .

Filled with raw, electric extracts from his diaries of the time, More Fool Me is a brilliant, eloquent account by a man driven to create and to entertain—revealing a side to him he has long kept hidden.

“Fry is an astonishingly charming fellow: erudite, playful and capable of writing in a style so intimate that readers can picture themselves sitting next to him at a splendid dinner party as he rather one-sidedly entertains the entire table.” —Slate

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468312287
Publisher:	ABRAMS, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	507
Sales rank:	365,659
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Stephen Fry is an actor, producer, director, and writer who has starred in numerous TV series including Blackadder, Jeeves & Wooster, and the sketch show A Bit of Fry & Laurie. He is the bestselling author of four novels as well as several works of nonfiction.

Stephen Fry was born in London in 1957 and educated at Stout's Hill, Uppingham, and Queens' College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he joined the Footlights, where he first met Hugh Laurie. He has numerous television appearances to his credit, most notably, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder, QI, and House. Major film roles include Peter in Peter's Friends (1990) and Oscar Wilde in Wilde (1997); in the realm of television, his critically acclaimed The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive won an Emmy. He is the author of the best selling novels The Liar, The Hippopotamus, Making History, and Revenge: A Novel, as well as the highly acclaimed autobiography Moab Is My Washpot and, in 2005, a well-received guide to writing poetry, The Ode Less Travelled.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 3

Catch-up 7

Very Naughty, but… in the Right Spirit 13

Moral or Medical? 69

The Early Days 77

Notes from a Showbusiness Career 173

Living the Life 197

Dear Diary 229

Postarse 379

Illustrations 383

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Stephen Fry:

“This is, above all else, a thoughtful book. And namedroppy too, and funny . . . Its camaraderie of tone lets it wear its learning lightly yet leaves you with . . . new insights, new ways of looking at things.” —The Guardian

“Funny, poignant . . . His prose feels like an ideal form of conversation.” —The Washington Post

“Delightful . . . To read this book is to fall in love (perhaps not for the first time) with its subjects . . . Strongly recommended.” —National Review

“Fry begins with an unnecessary apology for the ordinariness of his writing, and then proceeds to write masterfully, assessing himself with his signature blend of self-loathing and baffled amusement . . . The memoir stands as proof of the author's intelligence, wit, and insight.”—Entertainment Weekly

“The Fry Chronicles is so slickly charming it seems churlish to harrumph.” —The Wall Street Journal

Editorial Reviews

The Fry Chronicles is so slickly charming it seems churlish to harrumph.

The Wall Street Journal

Fry is an astonishingly charming fellow: erudite, playful and capable of writing in a style so intimate that readers can picture themselves sitting next to him at a splendid dinner party as he rather one-sidedly entertains the entire table...Fry is a multi-hyphenate talent.

Slate

Praise for Stephen Fry:“This is, above all else, a thoughtful book. And namedroppy too, and funny . . . Its camaraderie of tone lets it wear its learning lightly yet leaves you with . . . new insights, new ways of looking at things.” —The Guardian“Funny, poignant . . . His prose feels like an ideal form of conversation.” —The Washington Post“Delightful . . . To read this book is to fall in love (perhaps not for the first time) with its subjects . . . Strongly recommended.” —National Review

“Fry begins with an unnecessary apology for the ordinariness of his writing, and then proceeds to write masterfully, assessing himself with his signature blend of self-loathing and baffled amusement . . . The memoir stands as proof of the author's intelligence, wit, and insight.”—Entertainment Weekly

“The Fry Chronicles is so slickly charming it seems churlish to harrumph.” —The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

Praise for Stephen Fry:This is, above all else, a thoughtful book. And namedroppy too, and funny . . . Its camaraderie of tone lets it wear its learning lightly yet leaves you with . . . new insights, new ways of looking at things. —The GuardianFunny, poignant . . . His prose feels like an ideal form of conversation. —The Washington PostDelightful . . . To read this book is to fall in love (perhaps not for the first time) with its subjects . . . Strongly recommended.

National Review

Fry begins with an unnecessary apology for the ordinariness of his writing, and then proceeds to write masterfully, assessing himself with his signature blend of self-loathing and baffled amusement . . . The memoir stands as proof of the author's intelligence, wit, and insight.

Entertainment Weekly

2015-04-01
Fry brings his life story into the next decade in this pleasing follow-up to The Fry Chronicles (2012) and other books of memoir. It's not that he's self-absorbed but rather that the author has packed plenty of lives into less than 60 years: intellectual and criminal, genius and addict, beset by countless maladies but always game to wander off onto mountaintop or into jungle in the service of adventure. Viewers of BBC America will now know him as the host of QI, fans of the Hobbit films will know him as a gold-crazed lakeside doge, and fans with longer memories will remember him from A Bit of Fry and Laurie (with House's Hugh Laurie) and other confections—to all of which Fry adds that he's a "representative of madness, Twitter, homosexuality, atheism, annoying ubiquity and whatever other kinds of activity you might choose to associate with me." With so much to tell, it's a touch disappointing that Fry drifts from coherent narrative to sometimes less-than-scintillating diary entries. There's also perhaps a bit more about the agonies and ecstasies of cocaine than one might care to read ("As my prosperity rose my ability to acquire higher-quality cocaine increased commensurately….Better purity meant less diarrhea, nasal bleeding and nausea")—though that was the late 1980s and early '90s for you, a time of excess and abandon that today's grim austerity makes all the more nostalgiaworthy. Fry, a gifted writer with a perfect sense of comic timing and anecdote-spinning, name-drops to beat Jim Harrison, but what a list of names he has to drop: from Emma Thompson to Alastair Cooke, P.G. Wodehouse, John Mills, Christopher Hitchens, and the Prince of Wales. If you're a fan of Oscar Wilde, whom Fry has portrayed on stage and screen, then by near definition you'll be a fan of this writer and this book. Lots of fun—and readers who have been following all along will be wanting more, and soon.

Kirkus Reviews