Book: Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing

Author: Matthew Perry

Publisher: Headline

Price: ₹799

Do the highly successful and obscenely rich invent stories of struggle to offset the guilt they carry along with their privilege? How terrible can things get when they have money to throw at almost every problem? What kind of person is naive enough to believe that fame would not extract its rightful price? If these questions have crossed your mind, read Matthew Perry’s book.

The author is best known for playing the charmingly awkward Chandler Bing in the American sitcom, F.R.I.E.N.D.S The show premiered in 1994 but the character is still remembered for oozing wit at the drop of a hat, especially in moments filled with emotional or sexual tension. This book takes us behind the scenes, and into the mind of this talented man who tells us that the creators of the show made a special effort to incorporate the actors’ real-life personalities into the characters they essayed.

While Perry was being applauded and paid unthinkable amounts for making people laugh, he was trapped in a private hell. He desperately wanted to be free of alcohol and drugs but his body and mind refused to cooperate on several occasions. He would have been happy to trade places with someone who was not in the spotlight but was able to sleep peacefully at night and sustain nurturing relationships with women.

Perry writes movingly about watching his father down six vodka tonics at one go and “live a perfectly functional life”; so he assumed that the same would be possible for him to achieve. But life had other plans for him. He adds, “... there was something lurking in my shadows and my genes, like a creepy beast in a dark place, something I had that my father did not, and it would be a decade before we knew what it was.”

It must have been hard to write a first-person account that is so raw and vulnerable which details his lived experience with addiction, detox and sobriety. He also writes about being raised by parents who separated from each other when he was a baby, feeling abandoned by both in different ways, and trying to fill every “spiritual hole” in his life with “a material thing”. The strength to articulate all of this deserves to be applauded in a patriarchal culture where men are rewarded for shutting up about their inner lives.

Perry admits to feeling that people will leave him if he does not please them so he ensures that the book has enough jokes. Many of these are at his own expense. Some are aimed at his parents for not giving him the childhood he wanted but the author is never mean-spirited even while venting.

Apart from regret, this book is also about gratitude — mostly for friends and former lovers who showed extraordinary generosity in challenging times. They showed up for him despite, or perhaps because of, their history. They made Perry realise that alcohol and drugs could dull his pain momentarily but never transform it into love.

In this book you will meet Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bruce Willis, M. Night Shyamalan, and Salma Hayek in addition to the illustrious cast of F.R.I.E.N.D.S But most importantly, you will meet parts of Perry’s life that he chooses to bare even when they do not make him look attractive, funny or desirable. For this courage alone, this memoir deserves to be read and shared widely.