A Book by Chris Jericho
For Chris Jericho’s fourth autobiographical outing, he finds a way to wrangle together some small stories from his life, some that he did not mention in previous books, and more modern happenings from the tail end of his time in WWE. He has packaged it all as somewhat of a self-help book. His general thesis here is that he has come a long way in his life, becoming a global celebrity in the realms of professional wrestling, music, and being a television personality, all due to hard work and not taking no for an answer. His stories are hilarious at times and go to show that even the most ridiculous people can do well in life if they believe in themselves and their own abilities.
“Chris Jericho has known what he wanted out of life since he was a teenager: to be a pro wrestler and to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Most of his high school friends felt that he lacked the tools necessary to get into either, but Chris believed in himself. With the wise words of Master Yoda echoing through his head (“Do or do not. There is no try.”), he made it happen. As a result, Chris has spent a lifetime doing instead of merely trying, managing to achieve his dreams while learning dozens of invaluable lessons along the way.No Is a Four-Letter Word distills more than two decades of showbiz wisdom and advice into twenty easy-to-carry chapters.”
I’m not really the audience for self-help books largely because the tips found within the pages are almost always nothing that would really help an average person working a 9 to 5 job. They are either complete B.S. or some out of touch, and largely unattainable goals, written by generational multi-millionaires. Considering Chris was the son of a professional Hockey player, this holds absolutely true to even himself. Self-help books also tend to slide into pseudo-religious stuff quite often (like business acumen as spirituality or something), and I’m not really into that either, thankfully that’s not here at all. Thankfully, that’s not the sort of book this is.
No Is a Four-Letter Word: How I Failed Spelling but Succeeded in Life is very much the same sort of book comprised of anecdotes and hilarious road stories that Jericho has created a literary career out of, and contains all the bells and whistles one would expect from a wrestling biography. For this very reason, I’ll give it a slide as one of the few self-help books I’ve enjoyed. It’s basically just a shorter sort of book that Jericho has previously written, this time broken into chapters that talk about advice that somebody had given Chris and how he used it to better himself. These topics range from things his famous musician friends told to him, to wild stories about accidentally listening to Yoko Ohno urinate in a toilet stall.
Overall, if you are a wrestling fan, this might be something to check out, especially if you are a fan of Chris Jericho or have read his previous work. It moves away from the pitfalls of the self-help genre and actually creates an interesting and fun read that can be easily broken up into small chunks. It’s not too heavy and keeps a light tone that I appreciate. Overall, it’s not his best book, but it’s a worthy addition to my bookshelf.