Thursday, June 28, 2012

Stephen Fry: The Liar

What is the point of this book I asked myself after reading a quarter of it, and considered not bothering with the rest. But I kept going, largely because I was in bed sick Wednesday (food poisoning probably, woe me) and ended up reluctantly reading the whole thing. But what was the point remains the focal question. He's put in a caveat on the first empty leaf thingie before the actual book (I forget the word for those empty pages): "Nothing here is true" it says or something to that effect. Having read the second part of his autobiography though I can see that the book echoes his life, so it's sort of true. But of course the book is called The Liar, and in his autobiography he writes how he's been afraid all his life of being discovered to be a fraud and trickster so ... I dunno. It doesn't grab me. The bits that are supposed to be more sincere are not. In a way, perhaps, it perfectly illustrates what Fry tries to say in his autobiography - that he isn't really terribly intelligent, he just has a good memory and is sort of a wit. Being able to see that automatically makes you of more than average intelligence of course. Ta-daa.

On the whole though? Dull. I just didn't enjoy it. Fittingly, it felt insincere and fake. But what's the point of that.

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