Panic, doom, and dismay overcame me as I approached the end of the audiobook of Rob Lowe’s 2011 autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. I’d spent nine transfixed hours listening to Lowe’s cheerful gossip about everyone from Tom Cruise to Bill Clinton, intermingled with hard-won insights about the lurking dangers of the dissipated life, and the prospect of not having Lowe’s voice in my ears made me blanch. At the moment, I’m feeling so bereft, I might actually try to watch some episodes of The West Wing.
Okay, just kidding — I’m not into self-harm — but this is the greatest Hollywood memoir ever written. True, I haven’t read every Hollywood memoir, but I know someone who has: John Podhoretz. If the guy who played the second Darren on Bewitched wrote a book, John would gobble it up. He could tell you why you should read Allen Funt’s book but not Merv Griffin’s. (Or vice versa.)
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