The surprise positive review of 2022 I didn't think I would be writing...

I am going to post a review of the Humboldt book I P R O M I S E I just took a short break from it because my mind needed to read (for some reason) a slew of subpar books before making my way back to it’s richly detailed storytelling. With that being said, I finished this slew of books towards the end of November 2022 with one I was mildly curious about and much to my surprise it was a better read than I had expected. Honestly hopes were low. Memoirs are not my favourite genre particularly when they are one of two things:

1.) A memoir that’s secretly a self-help book written by someone regurgitating-without much depth-a bunch of ideas they have appropriated from older thinkers while pretending they don’t live in extreme privilege. The very worst ones are centered on trying to tell us dear readers how ‘easily’ we can make our lives better by just willing it or getting up off our lazy asses eye roll.

2.) Written by a celebrity. Sorry famous people, just cause you have a platform does not mean you are an expert in everything and are owed a microphone or soap box. It DEFINITELY does not mean we care about your ‘rags to riches’ story, that you can actually write or that you earned that book deal.

So all those things being very true of me, nobody was more shocked than I that I actually enjoyed reading Matthew Perry’s memoir, ‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.’ This book was published November 1st 2022 and honestly when I added it to my kindle I had heard nothing of it, wasn’t aware of the hype that came after and didn’t have any real desire to read it beyond the fact that it was about a person who starred in one of my favourite (don’t hate me I know it isn’t cool) sitcom shows from growing up. It mainly caught my attention because it’s about addiction issues, which I am personally connected to and love reading on for perspective and healing. I saw it on my Goodreads suggestions over a lonely thanksgiving week and thought, “Ok, well I have been reading a bunch of shite fiction lately maybe I’ll give this a go and hopefully it won’t be too disappointing like the Poehler incident.”***

Perry has received some significant acclaim since the release of his book which details his life all the way from his parents’ backgrounds and his displaced, wayward childhood to the height of his celebrity success when he was a cultural darling whilst simultaneously battling extreme drug and alcohol addiction. For the most part, stories that center around a person’s deep pain and suffering can be risky territory and there is always the chance it can become a form of trauma porn. Perry holds nothing back and to be frank the book is at times gratuitous and shocking from the get-go. The violence and wretchedness of his disease is told with his usual acerbic wit and brutal, sarcastic tongue that allows this extremely personal history to be told without egoism, or an attempt to make himself sound like a hero. He lets all of it loose, every thing he has done, taken, lost and abused; it is all there with no shame he lays it bare. I found myself deeply moved. This is a man who has suffered so much and caused so much suffering and as I came away from reading it I just wanted to sit with him and hold him. It is not usual to read a story where someone is detailing their pain without them playing a victim card or blaming others. Perry is honest to a fault going into explicit detail over and over again about the devastation of his choices on his life and what it is like inside the mind of an addict. Something a lot of society knows nothing about and can struggle to feel compassion for. As his story unfurls he reveals, with extreme emotion, the factors in his life that he believes are the reasons he is still alive. Namely his beloved family and close friends. His parents surface significantly in his story over and over. His father was an actor with his own past of disordered drinking and his mother a retired beauty pageant winner who struggled to raise him alone in Canada, eventually sending him off to LA with his father. He is an honest if flawed son. They have stood by him through it all and regularly in the book he professes his deep love for them and his friends who he credits as the most compassionate and supportive people someone like him did not deserve. The book returns consistently to the theme of friendship saving his life as Perry shares harrowing stories of how his parents never stopped showing up no matter how many times he has relapsed and how manipulative and stupid he has been sometimes hurting them beyond what one would think a parent could forgive. There is a lot of deeply emotional and spiritual themes here. Unconditional love and grace, a family brought together through trauma as opposed to being torn apart, and a burgeoning sense of a spiritual awakening set off by a divine encounter that only a mind addled by drugs has the lowered mental walls to receive. It’s all very dramatic and keeps you held in the story whilst reminding you that this is a real person who is still alive, barely, and who will likely never be truly healed but who is trying.

Some of the criticism being thrown Perry’s way comes from the fact that he is writing this reflection on his battle with addiction while only recently sober and at that not successfully for very long. Many people feel this undermines the lessons he is trying to impart and thus, they distrust both the wisdom he spouts regarding spirituality and sobriety, as well as his likelihood to-well-remain sober. I think that’s sad and I hate that cynicism is such a powerful force in humanity and so easily accepted. Here is a man clinging to hope and wanting to tell his story while he still can, why should we write him off as a failure when he is trying again, trying to change far more than many of us are ever willing to in our own behaviours, ideologies and mistakes. I truly hope he makes it. Other negative responses have called him ‘misogynistic’, and ‘anti-feminist’ for his statements and recollections of women. Are his thoughts and perspectives on women pleasant? No, they are indicative of an unhealthy psyche and cultural understanding of women that doesn’t fit with our current wave of feminism. He has a warped, outdated view of women and tends to give them the Madonna treatment, coveting them as a sexual object while desiring for them to rescue him and mother him. However, I do not think this is a fair literary criticism and I think to slander the account of the perspective of the author undermines the point of a personal memoir. This is his story, these are his thoughts and he is giving them to us without pretense and without making excuses. Are we supposed to like them? No, we probably wouldn’t like most people’s innermost thoughts if we knew them. So I am not going to base my judgement of this book as a good read off of whether the author’s innermost thoughts personally offend me. Instead I acknowledge that I did not come to this book expecting to want to model my life after this celebrity or put him on any kind of pedestal and I am grateful for his candidness even if it’s a little much sometimes.

With that being said there were some things I could say I might take a little issue with in the book. There was a lot of name-dropping. Like a lot. Perry has had a lot of friends and dalliances in high places. I don’t care for name-dropping, it irks me both in the famous and in real life. If you tell me you know the chef and I should really extend you some privilege that goes against the rules of the restaurant then I will absolutely never respect you. Sorry social climber, you are a parasite. Perry has also made a lot of money and he does not hold back from addressing his exorbitant levels of wealth and decades of accumulation of homes and cars. This didn’t bother me as much as I had thought it would on reflection. Most celebrities lie or pretend with a shy modesty about how rich we all know they really are. There is a weird, money purity culture with the uber rich and famous where they like us to all think “oh hey they are just like us” because for some reason it sells their image better and we are more likely to buy a lot of the crap they are peddling. Perry does not do this in fact he brags, A LOT, and it’s refreshing. It’s shocking how much money he has made and how he spent it but at least the guy has the decency to not feign a modest, normal life. Is it douchy? Yes, but does it add value to his story because it lends his words an authenticity and revelatory nature that shows just how much he wants to come clean and does he also consistently, readily admit he is a big douche? Also yes.

In the end of it all I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads which is pretty high. I would say personally it was a 3.5 star read for the most part- some of the technical writing issues grated on me. After sitting with it, when I finished binge reading it, I felt the surprise of my enjoyment and the emotional dimension of this poor man’s story pushed it up to a 4 for me. Watching interviews with Perry now after this release you can see the toll his addictions have had on his body, his physical and mental changes that he will carry as scars for as long as he lives and it just breaks your heart. There are many people who, having no context for life with an addict or addiction, will not understand how one can feel compassion and empathy for someone who chose to do the things they did to themselves. I think Perry does a good job revealing to his audience that is not always a choice and sometimes there are forces that abuse and haunt on a level some of us are blessed to not know and that for the people who are touched by addiction well those souls need us to start trying to understand. Addiction is a violence on the human soul that splits the self into a darkness iced over with brutality and fear and the inability to escape even if it makes total and complete sense to just stop. And yet…

As I wrote this review I was listening to Late Night Tales by Bonobo on vinyl. Highly recommend for deep, emotional thinking and otherworldly, writing theme music.

***I STILL have not made peace with how crappy Amy Poehler’s 2014 memoir ‘Yes Please’ was. So much so it actually led me to dislike her where before I enjoyed her comedy and personality. Sad face.