One for the Books: Memoirs of famous people
- Mary Louise Ruehr
Their names are familiar, for completely different reasons, and their life stories, luckily for us, make for good reading.
I had so much fun with “The Uncool” by Cameron Crowe! I was all about music in the 1970s, and so was Crowe. He was just 16 when he became a professional journalist, interviewing rock bands from his Southern California home base and on the road. He’s such a good writer that he pulls the reader in and takes them along with him.
He writes about his extraordinary mother, who hated rock and roll, expected him to become a lawyer, and was not happy when he skipped school to interview band members. He was only 14 when he got his first big interview, and his young age often caused problems backstage, in bars, and on the road. He gives us anecdotes of traveling with rock bands, what sad characters some stars could be, and how drugs and alcohol prevail in the music world.
Crowe lets us feel his elation at finally getting a chance to write for Rolling Stone magazine and even getting a cover story. He talks in detail about David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, the Who, Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh, Gregg Allman, and many more. About Bowie: “No one had interviewed Bowie in any depth in years. He was the unicorn, the most sought-after subject to every cassette-slinging rock writer like me.” On Joni Mitchell: “She spoke with third-draft precision.” He just lived for those moments when the subject was being open with him: “The room changes when deep truths are being spoken, when raw honesty is in the air.”
Once his journalism career started to wane, he found a new one, writing screenplays for films such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Jerry Maguire,” and more. I enjoyed this book so much that when I finished, I again watched “Almost Famous,” which is pretty much the movie version of this book and for which he was awarded the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Simply delightful!
British actor Anthony Hopkins recalls the highs and lows of his life in “We Did OK, Kid.” I’ve always admired his wide range of talent, playing characters from King Lear to Hannibal Lecter to Thor’s dad.
Hopkins recalls his childhood in Wales, where he was an unsuccessful student. But he did show talent, he writes: “I was eerily good at copying any voices or sounds I heard,” and he excelled at recitation. One day the teacher showed a film of “Hamlet” that sparked something in him. He tells us, “I felt that Olivier as Hamlet was speaking to me, referring to some long-vanished, ancient part of myself. It was an unearthly experience.” He won a scholarship to a drama school, began working in small theaters, and found himself in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Eventually, of course, he went on to Hollywood and won two Academy Awards.
He is open and honest regarding his alcoholism and sobriety. As a drunk, he says, “I was an egotistic brute — young, atheistic, arrogant,” but “I never had any idea that I was an alcoholic.”
Anybody who enjoys acting and backstage buzz will find plenty of interest here, including advice and anecdotes. It was fun to read and very well done. And he finishes the book with some of his favorite poems to read aloud.
In her first book, Malala Yousafzai introduced herself with the title “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.” She was 15 when a member of the Taliban shot her in the face, trying to silence her demands for girls’ education and rights. Now she’s all grown up, a college graduate and a married woman, and she tells the world her own coming-of-age story in “Finding My Way.”
She writes about her childhood in Pakistan: “When I was eleven, the Taliban announced that ... girls would be banned from going to school. ... I started writing an anonymous blog for the BBC, chronicling life under the terrorists’ rule. ... I went public, declaring to anyone who would listen that education was my right. ... I could not let these men take away my future.” But one day “a bullet changed the trajectory of my life.” At only 16, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which, she says, “made me into a mythical heroine. ... I tried to shrug off other people’s expectations and hear my own voice,” but “the hardest thing to be was myself.”
Forced to leave Pakistan to keep her safe, her family settled in England, and when the time came, she enrolled at Oxford University. She reveals what life was like there, making friends, managing PTSD and panic attacks, and how she dealt with Pakistani traditions that put limits on females. She writes, “Too often in my home country, women’s bodies are used to measure the strength of our religious beliefs and national identity. Challenge the social norms created and enforced by men, and you disgrace your family and community. ... On darker days, it meant a woman could be killed for rejecting a suitor or posting pictures of herself on Instagram. When a man’s honor lies in a woman’s body, he will take her life to reclaim it.”
What she’s probably most proud of is that, using the Nobel Prize money, she has built a school for girls near her Pakistani hometown.
The book is surprisingly candid and well written.
Happy reading!
Mary Louise Ruehr
Mary Louise Ruehr is a books columnist for The Portager. Her One for the Books column previously appeared in the <em>Record-Courier</em>, where she was an editor.