TL;DR
9/10. A wrestling memoir that became a runaway bestseller, written longhand by Foley himself with no ghostwriter, which is precisely why it works. Read it in a single weekend and it has stayed with me since.
Foley’s career is the story of a man with no natural advantages who out-worked everybody. He was not the biggest, not the most athletic, and not conventionally marketable. He drove hundreds of miles every weekend to train, took punishment that has permanently cost him, and kept going until the WWE finally signed him.
What he built was unique, and the book explains how without ever asking for sympathy.
I came to it sideways. My late wife watched wrestling constantly in the years she was ill and largely bedridden, and Foley was one of her favorites, along with the Rock and Steve Austin. She would cheer when they won and cry when they lost. She died in 2005. Years later I found the book and read it in a single weekend.
Did Mick Foley write Have a Nice Day himself?
Yes, in longhand, and that is what makes the book what it is.
The publisher expected to assign a ghostwriter, which is standard for a celebrity memoir and was standard then. Foley refused, and wrote the manuscript by hand over several months while still working a full wrestling schedule.
The result is a voice nobody would have produced on his behalf. The digressions, which a professional would have cut. The self-deprecation, which a professional would have moderated because it undercuts the subject. The willingness to be unflattering about his own decisions, which a professional would have softened because the client has to live with the book.
I say this as somebody who writes books for other people. A ghostwritten memoir can be excellent and most of the best ones are, because most people cannot write and their story deserves better than they can give it. But a person who can genuinely write and has something to say will produce something a ghostwriter cannot, and this is the clearest example I know.
What is actually in Have a Nice Day?
The early years are the strongest section and the one nobody expects. Foley working the independent circuit for almost nothing, driving overnight between towns, taking bookings in places with no crowd and no money, and learning the business from people who had no reason to teach him.
There is also a great deal about the physical cost, and he is honest about it in a way that is uncomfortable. The Hell in a Cell match, the ear, the accumulated concussions, the decisions he made about his own body that he cannot undo. He does not present these as heroic and he does not present them as regret. They are what the job cost and he is reporting the invoice.
And there is the character work, which is the part that transfers to any writer. Foley invented several personas and explains how each was built, what each was for, and how a wrestling character has to be a real thing about the performer amplified and not an invention laid on top. That is exactly true of a memoir voice.
What can a ghostwriter learn from Have a Nice Day?
Three things.
The first is that specificity beats polish. Foley’s prose is not good by any technical measure. Sentences run long, tenses wander, and the structure is chronological because he did not know another way to do it. It does not matter, because every page contains something only he could report.
The second is that a memoir voice should sound like the person on their best day, not like a writer. When I capture a client’s voice I am listening for how they tell a story when they are relaxed, and Foley is relaxed throughout, because there was no intermediary to perform for.
The third is the hardest to act on. If a client can write and wants to, the right advice is sometimes to tell them to write it themselves and hire an editor instead. That costs me a project and it produces a better book, and this one is the proof I point to.
Why does Have a Nice Day hold up?
Because it sold millions of copies to people who had never watched a match, which means the wrestling is the setting and not the subject.
The subject is a man with no advantages deciding what he was willing to spend to build something, and then spending it. That is legible to anybody, and it is why the book outlasted the era it documents and outlasted most of the memoirs published alongside it.
Foley is also very funny, which does more work than it gets credit for. A book about physical destruction that is genuinely funny about it is a much harder thing to write than either a solemn version or a jokey one.
Verdict
The best sports memoir I have read and one of the strongest arguments available for an author writing their own book when they can.
If you are considering a ghostwriter, read this first and be honest with yourself about which category you fall into. Most people should hire one. A few should not, and the few who should not are the ones who can already hear their own voice on the page.
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