Could you *be* any more delusional and self-serving as this man? I loved him in *Friends* and for a long time was feeling very sympathetic towards him and his struggles, addiction can get to the best of people and I do admire those who keep fighting. But this book was something else. A blatant lack of self-awareness, narcissism and inflated ego was just too much.
This is the man, who admits he cheated on basically each of his girlfriends, yet at the same time thinks “he’s a very good person, he would never hurt anyone and God can see this”.
This is the man who hurt and drove away those who helped him the most, those who spent months with him in hospitals and rehabs, risking their careers and private lives, and suddenly were disposable when he was discharged because “as long as I’m sober, I don’t need them any more and now they’re needy”.
This is the man who constantly shits on every person more successful than him. Who thinks that every bad thing that happened to him must be the fault of someone else. That he’s not even in the slightest responsible for how his life looks like, because “it’s a disease, and you’re lucky you don’t have it, woe is me, I don’t have any control over it”. Who destroyed so many movies because of his addiction, and once just disappeared for 6 months during the production to go on a binge and later detox, and is in absolute shock they sued him for financial loses. “How could they, it was health issue??”. Who hurt every woman he’s every been with, but when his ex (!) informs him she’s getting married and won’t be able to attend his play he says “her emailing me about it is the worst thing someone has done to me, I would NEVER do that to a person, how could she”. The whole book is just constant self-serving “me, myself and I, why everyone around me is always wrong and why all I did to myself and other people is not my fault”. I was physically ill by the end of this book.
The narcissism is so obvious it’s not even funny. Early in his career his supposed friend rejected role of Chandler, which he obviously later regretted seeing how it played out for Matthew. What Perry has to say about it? He just randomly quotes a journalist saying that it was a blessing to the world it was Perry who was cast and that his friend would be a shitty Chandler anyway. Who the hell would do something like that to a friend? Did you just kept this quote memorized for 20+ years or went out of your way to locate any negative comment about your friend to include this in your memoir? Absolutely shocking. More on narcissism – he writes his first play in 10 days and self proclaims it as “great work better than classics” and gets all annoyed that it was demolished by critics. Did it ever occur to him that maybe it wasn’t that good and he could work on it more? Of course not, critics just don’t understand his genius, and besides, here’s one semi-positive review he found – proceeds to quote it in its entirety. Yes, quoting passages praising Matthew Perry takes quite big portion of this book.
As for his addiction, this is something that happens to him against his will, he would love to trade places even with homeless or broke people, they don’t get how hard he got it in life with his addicted brain. He’d love to stop, but when even the slightest hardship happens in his life, he just has to drink or use. It’s just how his body works, not his fault, you’re lucky if you don’t have this disease. People who overcame addiction? Oh, they had it easy, easier version, easier to overcome, lucky bastards. He’s one of the few that got the hardest version and he’s a hero for living with it every day.
I could go on, but let’s stop here. If this was a work of fiction, I’m certain people would find it almost unbelievable. You can’t be that dense and oblivious to all of your faults, this is just bad writing. But here we are – the person who carefully made sure to only surround himself with yes-men is unable to see or admit he is the only constant in every situation that he messed up. What a surprise. Good luck with sobriety with the attitude of constant whining and looking for others to blame, you’ll need that, Matthew.
by Terrible_Vermicelli1
42 Comments
Thanks for your review. I will happily skip it.
Wow, what an absolute dick! Thank you for sharing as I’ve been thinking about reading this one and you saved me from throwing my time down the drain.
I cannot stand this dude. He’s basically a giant baby.
A self justification piece written by an out of control addict and narcissist? You’re a trooper for just attempting to read that.
Sounds like typical addict mentality to me.
No accountability, delusional, self-absorbed, expecting everyone to forgive them no matter what. Putting forth little real effort to change your selfishness, and not giving a damn how much it hurts others around them.
Not saying this is how all of them turn out but it’s definitely an archetype.
Totally agree with this. The bit about his PA being the only woman he’ll respect, because she’s a lesbian and therefore the only woman who wouldn’t sleep with him if he tried hard enough (but also listen to him talk about how fuckable other women are!) is also pretty disgusting. Many celebrities are out of touch, but I think very few are less self-aware than Perry is.
Wow. So halfway through your post, I was thinking “*what a dick; I’d hate this book, glad I know to skip it.*” But by the end, I’m thinking it sounds so awful I kinda want to read it.
I listened to the podcast Celebrity memoir book club cover it and this is spot on what they said. Like he couldn’t have told ANY fun, light hearted stories about friends???
I could have gone my whole life without
Reading about his impotence. Why dude.
And the part about making out with Valerie Bertennili while her husband was asleep- why pull her into this? Some things he should have kept out of the book.
That’s the thing about celebrity memoirs, most are like that. Perry’s I know is bad, he really only sees women as “conquests” and only valuable if they sleep with him. But if you ever wanna see narcissist, you need to check out Alec baldwins most recent book. In the book he talks about how it was hard making friends because his mom (who was raising like 7 kids) didn’t do a good enough job cleaning the house, and how he personally blames himself for getting trump elected because he slacked off in his activism, he also really glosses over how he is known to be terrible on set and blames the crew
TIL Bojack Horseman is based off of Matthew Perry 🤣🤣🤣 (joke)
I kept thinking is this Matthew Perry or Bojack Horseman I’m reading about here?
In other words, he isn’t in recovery and hasn’t taken responsibility for his actions. Seems he learned next to nothing from all the damage he has caused or from the time and money he spent in rehabs for celebs.
Chandler on screen. Ross offscreen.
I get the same kind of feeling whenever I see these memoirs or other works by ex-Mafia guys. A lot of times it seems like they’re subtly bragging about their former position. They don’t really seem like they feel much regret or remorse for what they did. The guy is just mad that he failed and ruined his own life.
Heard a story of how he once refused to tip the waitress staff at a comedy club and even went out of his way to stop others from tipping her. Without even reading the book I’m going to say I believe your entire analysis.
Definitely opened this expecting to read about Commodore Matthew Perry’s memoirs.
Back in the 90s
I was in a very famous TV show
This isn’t a man in recovery, this is a man with enough money to pretend he is and be able to get away with it.
He is now my go-to example when trying to explain the concept of a “dry drunk” to someone. He may not be actively drinking/using, but holy shit does he still have A LOT of work to do.
I’m happy to have read your review instead of his memoir.
This brings me back to the good old days when I used to read reviews trashing bad books on Goodreads. So much fun
This reminds me of two incidents:
[Gilbert Gottfried and Norm MacDonald making fun of Perry’s hubris over his supposed drastic invention within comedy](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIM9lX-ImWE)
[Perry debating drug treatment policy with Peter Hitchens](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CDtIZZiySgA). This one is complicated because Perry seems to make reasonable points and Hitchens takes an extremely conservative and hardline view, and is a total prick about it. But hmm, maybe there’s at least something to the idea that Perry doesn’t value personal responsibility after all?
THAT, my friends, is how you diatribe lol. Scathing. Snarky. Completely true. I love everything about this.
You think he was the real inspiration for Bojack?
Matthew Perry: “I just read the greatest play that’s ever been written.”
His Buddy: “Oh wow, who wrote it?”
Matthew Perry: “Me.”
I think the book is hilarious I was laughing my ass off.
Multimillionaire poor boy is trying to survive in this cruel cruel world 😀 he fondly recalled 100 asses he fucked, lake of vodka he drunk and mountain of oxy he devoured, ohhh what a poor millionaire 😉
It’s a very weird example how a memoir can backfire and that’s actually not that easily achieved. Especially for a guy who I think a lot of people considered to be quite likeable. I think as a reader you are primed to take the perspective of the writer and to empathise with them. So for that to not happen and instead leaving a lot of readers liking him less than before just shows how much of a disconnect there is between him and readers.
Thanks for this, after reading one interview with him when the book came out, I had already decided it might not be for me.
On the other hand, I quite like such shipwreck autobiographies. It’s quite a feat to write about yourself, have complete control over what you publish and manage to paint yourself in a really bad light.
My favourite here is Pete Townsend (The Who). He manages to portray himself as a small minded, rather boring and overall extremely unpleasant person. I could not believe the aplomb with which he assassinated his character. Quite a read!
I love that these reviews remind me of why I stay in the genres of fiction. Reality is way more horri-bad.
He sounds like someone who is still deep in the addiction mind set, imo. I hope he will be alright, it was quite a harrowing read.
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I had exactly the same reaction, OP.
That introduction by Lisa Kudrow should have been a warning. It was bizarre! Like it was written by someone with Stockholm Syndrome, struggling to find something *nice* to say, while staying truthful.
I’ve always *loved* the Chandler character, and Matthew Perry is undoubtedly very talented, but by the end of the book (yes, I finished it!) I’d lost all respect for him as a person. I honestly have no idea why any editor would let him release this mess in its final form. I can only imagine that it was much, *much* worse than what was finally published.
His obsession with name-dropping, the mummy/daddy issues, the lack of self-awareness, the cheap shots at Keanu Reeves…and that cringey M. Night Shyamalan anecdote! Oh.My.God!
Your life may be worse for having read it, but our lives are measurably better for reading your description of it. Thank you for sparing us from ever having to waste our time with him ever again. And thanks also for reminding us what little punks like him sound like so we can avoid them at all costs.
It was badly written too. Desperately needed another edit, and I found it odd they let him repeat himself so many times.
I didn’t find it necessarily narcissistic, but it was definitely self pity to the max. It was just so bizarre how he dated the most beautiful women in the world, rejected them all from his juvenile addiction, that he basically blames on daddy not loving him enough (when it looked like to me his dad gave him quite a lot) then was whinging he was “unlucky in love”.
Dude, Julia Roberts LOVED YOU. Wtf did you do?!!
When it came out, I had postulated that there can’t have been anything to actually put in it – he didn’t do anything noteworthy before Friends, the amount of cocaine he did during Friends means he can’t remember half of it, and he absolutely hasn’t done anything noteworthy after Friends.
Apparently “unmitigated twattery” is the meat and potatoes in such a dish. Good to know my apathy was rewarded!
This quote pretty much ruined friends for me and any interest for Perry ever. “River was a beautiful man, inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out,” Perry wrote. “It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down. Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us”
Like yeah as he doesn’t use and abuse drugs all day every day? Pretty much sums up all I needed to know about MP
My dad was working security at the Gund Arena in Cleveland for a KISS concert when a coked out dude tried to get backstage without a pass. My dad stopped him, and Matthew Perry tried to pull the “do you know who I am?”
My dad replied with, “no and I don’t give a shit.” Matthew identified himself as being on Friends. My dad asked for an autograph, which Matthew gave. Then he said, “now can I go back?” and my dad said, “no, not without a pass.”
That’s my Matthew Perry story. Dude has always been a dick.
As an alcoholic in recovery (I just got out of my first rehab actually), malignant narcissism is unfortunately common in addicts, especially recurrent ones like he is. One of the key things they teach you in rehab (this was my first) is that every relapse will amplify negative traits and even if you were previously a positive and genial drunk like I was, you won’t be for long if you keep relapsing, and even when you’re sober again eventually. He’s got a hell of a lot of relapses under his belt.
Yes, addiction is a disease that can and does creep up on anyone, and its a horrible disease at that, but it comes down to the individual whether or not to take action to manage it and stay sober once they’ve fallen victim to it. Humility, and a determination to change and redeem yourself are at the center of successful and maintained sobriety. If you don’t truly want to quit, you simply won’t. It’s as simple as that. By the time you’re as far gone as him, you don’t want to quit any more, and you become just, well, like he is. I’ve seen it happen to enough people who didn’t take recovery seriously. You don’t ever recover from addiction like you would with a regular disease, it’s chronic and permanent. You’re they only one who can take the initiative and determination to control it and stay clean. Realising that the responsibility for that is entirely on you is like step 1 in the process. Seems he hasn’t even gotten THAT far…
Shame on you mods, for removing this.
It was civil, albeit a bit on the emotional side. There was no witch hunt or call to action. OP is simply stating their opinion on the book, and subsequently about the author (especially appropriate given that it’s basically an autobiography).
The post is well put together and on topic. It abides to all of the sub’s rules, as well as Reddit’s rules.
Removing the post was a mistake and should be undone.
For anyone who wants to read the post, it’s available on unddit, [here](https://www.unddit.com/r/books/comments/11tgk2j/i_feel_sick_and_disgusted_after_reading_matthews/).
I’ll take my ban if necessary.
**Edit:** It’s back! Glad you came around, mods.
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Hard to hit bottom when you make $20 million a year no matter what you do