The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry

 Stephen Fry's autobiography is expected to be funny. He does not try to be funny - he just tries to be honest. And honest is the most funny when we look at how honest it can get. Fry is Jeeves to me and it is wonderful to hear of all the names that I admire and look up to - Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Ben Elton - all favorites of mine are great friends of his from college days.

Like a lot of us do Fry also suffers from an imposter syndrome and it comes through as he attempts to make sense of his life. From a childhood, privileged one would think, public school education, going down the wrong path - a few vices, even a small jail term for some schoolboy felony. But he comes out of that and finishes college, picks up a job as a teacher, joins Cambridge, discovers his love for theatre and acting and writing and just immerses himself into that life. He meets Hugh, Emma, Ben and a host of others, discovers that he is more tuned to gay relationships and settles down with a partner from his campus. Success, money, cars, TV - all by the time he is thirty. He writes of the people he met during his acting and writing career, brilliant minds. Somehow I felt that twang of envy when he writes about Hugh Laurie with whom he partnered many scripts and dramas, akin to what Naseeruddin Shah wrote felt about Om Puri in his bio. Emma they knew would pick up an Oscar someday even then and Ben was brilliant - one of my most precious possessions is his book/play 'Gasping'. Of course he mentions that lady director who meets him in the morning at the sets, picks off a hair form her lips and says - been licking my girl friend last night.

For all the success and fun, the decade or so of sexless life, the girl he fell in love with perhaps who finally married Hugh, there is a bittersweet element to it all through. A measure of the uncertain, of not knowing when it will all be taken away, found out, not knowing if what he feels is true or some illusion - Fry comes across as vulnerably as he can, opening himself out as much as he can, daring the world to take a shot. And for that, I completely love and admire the man. It took me a while to read it, not an easy read and I like where it ends - with his first snort. Another book perhaps.