Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture – mostly film, TV, and books – with some music and games thrown in. We’re here every Sunday night at 7 pm.
Earlier today I was thinking about autobiographies, realizing that it’s been a very ong time since I have read any. For some reason, the first one that came to mind is Yes, I Can – an autobiography written by Sammy Davis, Jr. The last one I can think of is Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama. Everything in between is currently a blank.
If Google is all it’s cracked up to be, why can’t I google autobiographies I have read??
I am (selfishly) hoping that it will jog my memory if we talk about autobiographies we have read. And inspire me read some more, though I actually prefer audiobooks at this point.
So, let’s talk autobiographies. And if you have suggestions for future Medium Cool topics. chime in with those, too!
War for Ukraine Day 318: We Need To Have a Bit of a Chat…
munira
Have you read Act One by Moss Hart? It’s been a while since I read it, but I thought it was great.
SiubhanDuinne
@munira:
I’ve recently read both of Agatha Christie’s autobiographies, and am about to embark on Stephen Fry’s memoirs.
SpongeBobtheBuilder
I highly recommend The Color of Water by James McBride.
WaterGirl
@munira: @SpongeBobtheBuilder:
Tell us a little bit about who that is?
tomtofa
The Education of Henry Adams. Can’t think of anything quite like it – humorous, melancholy, insightful history of the transition America was going through, self-reflective without ego or pomp.
SiubhanDuinne
@munira:
Loved that, although it’s been many decades since I read it. I should reread it.
Biographies, memoirs and autobiographies, diaries, letters — I love those genres
Phylllis
I enjoyed The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron and Clint Howard. I listen to a lot of audiobook biographies and autobiographies on my commute and it was just…nice to spend a couple of weeks with the boys. Just started listening to Mel Brooks’ All About Me and enjoying my daily dose of Mel.
Phylllis
@SpongeBobtheBuilder: What a lovely book. That one may be due for a re-read.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I listened to that too. I loved hearing the stories about the old days, Sid Cesar and Get Smart.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I don’t know if this counts as an audiobiography (it’s non-fiction), but I remember reading Dead Man Walking Sister Helen Prejean for an English class project in HS. I’d highly recommend it. I’ve always been an anti-death penalty person so I didn’t need persuading, but Prejean does an excellent job deconstructing pro-death penalty arguments and disproving them.
Her descriptions of the families of the victims has stuck with me the most. She would often encounter the same pro-DP family/couple at protests whose daughter was murdered. They were hollow shells of themselves
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
Greatest autobiography: “Ball Four” by Jim Bouton
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Moss Hart was one of the great names in American theatre in the 1930s and ‘40s. Playwright, lyricist, director; married to Kitty Carlisle of early TV game show fame inter alia.
ETA: I reread Michelle Obama’s Becoming not too long ago. It was every bit as good a read the second time through.
munira
@SiubhanDuinne: Me too. And I read it more than once. In fact, I could happily read it again.
munira
@WaterGirl: Moss Hart started out writing plays with George S. Kaufman and the book tells the story of their first hit. Later he was the director of My Fair Lady, the Broadway show.
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
Mel was recently on Terry Gross’s show (link) and he’s was prominently featured in the charming documentary “The Automat” (link), so I did a search to see what Mel was up to and discovered his granddaughter is drop dead gorgeous (photo) 👀
Starfish
Are memoirs allowed to take more liberties with the truth?
I liked Educated by Tara Westover. Towards the end of the book, she tries to reconcile her memories of growing up in an isolated religious sect with those of her brother.
I liked Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim about teaching at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
billcinsd
@munira: Moss Hart and George S Kaufman cowrote “The Man Who Came to Dinner” screenplay
laura
Patty Smith – Just Kids. Keith Richard’s, A Life. The Moon’s a balloon, David Niven. Michelle Obama- both books, all day, every day, That’s a good start.
SiubhanDuinne
@munira:
I’d like to go back to Act One and read it in tandem with Kitty Carlisle Hart’s autobiography, Kitty — which I don’t think I’ve ever read, for some odd reason.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you for the details!
munira
@SiubhanDuinne: I haven’t read it either, but that’s a great idea.
dexwood
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️: Great book. Read it when it was first published, Yep, I’m old. Good movie, too.
@laura: Thoroughly enjoyed that. I hardly ever read autobiographies, but that was worth the time,
WaterGirl
@dexwood: Thoroughly enjoyed which one? :-)
PAM Dirac
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️:
I’m not sure I say greatest but a very good read. This book and Jerry Kramer’s “instant Reply” were probably the trialblazers in books trying to present a more realist picture of what a professional athlete does than the league PR suggests.
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️:
Zuleika
If you want a deep dive into a fascinating family of sisters all born in the early 20th century, I recommend reading about the Mitfords, an English upper-class group who included Diana Mosley, wife of the fascist leader of Britain, Jessica, muckracking journalist in the US and a communist, Nancy, the novelist and biographer, and Deborah Cavendish, who became the Duchess of Devonshire. There are memoirs, biographies both of individuals and as a group, collected letters, etc. I’d start with Jessica’s memoir about her early life “Daughters and Rebels” (aka “Daughters and Hons”). Nancy wrote a couple of novels (including “Love in a Cold Climate”) that fictionalize the eccentric family only lightly. After her death in the late 90s, Jessica’s letters were collected, and she’s a ferociously good correspondent. All the sisters’ letters were also collected, and they are very worth reading. Even the Duchess wrote a very entertaining memoir in her later years.
The sisters also included Unity, who was such a huge fan of Hitler that she persuaded her parents to let her settle in Germany in the mid-30s and she managed to insert herself into his social circle. When Britain declared war on Germany, she shot herself in the head and Hitler arranged for her safe passage back to England. She and another sister did not write books; all the other four did.
Their mother, Lady Redesdale, is said to have remarked that every time she saw the words “Peer’s Daughter” in a headline in the newspaper, her heart sank because she knew it would be about one of her daughters in yet another scandal.
Tom Levenson
Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks was excellent.
kalakal
Sagittarius Rising – Cecil Lewis
Eastern Approaches – Fitzroy MacLean
are 2 I’d recommend. They both lived extraordinary lives
Warren Senders
I have a large collection of musicians’ autobiographies. Many are valuable even if ghost-written, but I don’t count them.
Good ones, where you really hear the artist’s own voices, include David Amram’s “Vibrations”; Dave Van Ronk’s “The Mayor Of MacDougal Street; and Nicolas Slonimsky’s “Perfect Pitch.”
Slonimsky is wildly funny and historically astonishing, the author starting out as a piano prodigy in pre-revolution Russia and ending his narrative a century later, performing one of his pieces with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention:
zhena gogolia
@Zuleika: I love Nancy’s novels. The miniseries of Pursuit of Love is pretty good
PAM Dirac
For me the most perspective altering autobiography I’ve read is “Autobiography of Malcom X”. I guess the first real 2×4 to the head that the main stream media is not interested in reality. Malcom X was a communist radical and that’s what they were sticking to no matter complicated the actual reality was.
Warren Senders
@Tom Levenson:
Sacks is always great, and “Uncle Tungsten” was wonderful. We read that out loud to our daughter when she was young.
Amir Khalid
I still haven’t finished Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, confusingly titled Born To Run. (Dave Marsh’s famous biography of him has the same, rather obvious title.)
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Moss Hart was a playwright. Among his most famous works (which he wrote in collaboration with George Kaufman, I believe, although my recollection is rusty) are You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner.
And speaking of performing legends from the 1930s, Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, is a sheer delight.
H.E.Wolf
One of my favorite autobigraphies is by Meredith Willson (with 2 L’s in his surname), the composer/lyricist of “The Music Man”. He wrote 3, and I think the one in which he describes all his earliest memories as sounds was: And There I Stood with My Piccolo.
When I was on my first Harry Truman kick, I read several memoirs by his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson. One of them was: Present at the Creation. I won’t spoil the joke by explaining the reason for the title; it’s in the preface.
Kenneth Branagh wrote a memoir at a very young (perhaps too young) age. The anecdote that I remember is from his performance as Saint Francis of Assisi, in one scene of which Francis shed all his clothes when abandoning his wealthy former lifestyle. Branagh recalled one of his castmates hazing him from upstage: “I’ve seen more meat than that on a dirty fork!”
I suppose I most enjoy autobiographers who can poke fun at themselves when it’s warranted. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal:
I had forgotten about Eastern Approaches. Fun book.
Narya
Last one I read was Springsteen’s. I’m a huge fan of his, so maybe not objective, but I did like it.
Zuleika
zhenia gogolia:
Yes, Nancy’s novels are charming, and she was devastatingly witty. Diana (the fascist) was considered one of the great beauties of her time, but the others were also very good looking. Beautiful, intelligent, witty, spirited, and wildly eccentric. What’s not to love?
zhena gogolia
@PAM Dirac: that was a big one for me
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@PAM Dirac: YES!
Kramer’s book was incredible. There used to be a Jackel here who went by the nym “Max McGee” (photo), I’m sure he read it too.
kalakal
It’s grim as hell, it is also an incredible book that more people should read
If This Is A Man – Primo Levi
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
If I could suggest a future topic for Medium Cool, I think it could be fun discussing classic/retro television sci-fi, like Star Trek, Doctor Who, Twilight Zone etc. Or 90s fantasy series like Hercules, Xena, Lois and Clark, etc. Unless that’s already been done 😅
prostratedragon
@Warren Senders: The Miles Davis autobiography sounds a lot like him as well. Interesting read years ago.
kalakal
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I’d like that
TS
Years ago I read Among the Porcupines by Carol Matthau – socialite and wife (from c. 1960) of Walter Matthau. Full of stories about the rich and famous from the 1940s onwards – woven through the stories of her own life.
It was a fun read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
patrick II
William Manchester
Goodbye Darkness : A Memoir of the Pacific War.
The historian William Manchester was the author of multiple biographies of John F Kennedy and also the writer of the the fine history
Craig
Have Mercy by Wolfman Jack is an excellent read. Some of the shit he got up to in Pirate Radio in Mexico is crazy. His descriptions of the radio industry back in his time are really educational. I did a favor for my greaser car club neighbor years ago and a couple of days later he presented me with the Wolfman’s book.
Relatedly the autobiography Crazy Frome The Heat is also an excellent read. His discussion of growing up as a Jewish kid in the 60s and long visits to relatives in NYC is pretty cool. Then bumming around and early Van Halen days playing backyard parties in Pasadena.
I’ve read both a couple of times over the years.
PaulB
I liked David Niven’s second autobiography: “Bring on the Empty Horses” more than I liked “The Moon’s a Balloon.” It focused more on his Hollywood career and it had some remarkable stories of well-known actors.
Not strictly an autobiography, but “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay,” by actress Cornelia Otis Skinner and journalist Emily Kimbrough, is a wonderfully hilarious memoir of their European tour in the 1920s. The anecdote about the rabbit-fur coats they bought had me laughing so hard that I was in tears.
Most of David Sedaris’s work is autobiographical and his stories are also hilarious, particularly if you hear them read by David himself. Once you hear his distinctive voice and delivery, it helps make the rest of his stories more enjoyable as you read them.
I was somewhat less impressed with Katharine Hepburn’s, “The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind.” There were some good anecdotes in the book but it never quite gelled for me and I found it to be pretty forgettable.
Trivia: David Niven was once on tap to play the role in “The African Queen” that eventually went to Humphrey Bogart. Bette Davis would have been his co-star.
If you’re a book lover, I highly recommend Helene Hanff’s “84 Charing Cross Road,” a story told in letters between Helene, a New York author and playwright, and the occupants of a small bookshop in London specializing in used antiquarian books. Anne Bancroft starred with Anthony Hopkins in the movie version, which I also recommend. The followup sequels by Ms. Hanff are entertaining but didn’t move me as much as the first one did.
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@H.E.Wolf:
That rings a bell. Didn’t read Acheson, but I did read “Counsel to the President” by Clark Clifford which was spellbinding, covering his work with Truman, JFK, and LBJ.
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: Yes, the Autobiography of Malcolm X was an eye-opener for me, too. It would be interesting to re-read that one today.
PAM Dirac
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️:
It’s been a long time since I read the book, but the Max McGee stories are memorable. Buying engagement rings by the gross. Lombardi escalating fines for sneaking out of camp until he finally says something like “Max if there’s something worth $10,000 dollars to sneak out of camp for, call me and I’ll come with you”.
Craig
@PAM Dirac: yes. I read that in school, and then everything was different.
AliceBlue
Wonderful Tonight – George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me – Patti Boyd
Cybill Disobedience – Cybill Shepherd
Member of the Family – Dianne Lake
After being abandoned by her parents at age 14, Lake drifted into the Manson family. It’s a disturbing but fascinating story about how she survived and made her way back.
Suzanne
Shot In The Heart, by Mikal Gilmore (brother of Gary).
I’m curious to read Greg Graffin’s new memoir, Punk Paradox.
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: I love that you have apparently had more than one Harry Truman kick. :-)
CaseyL
Just finished the Paul Newman autobio, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir. Much more interesting than you might expect – though if you’ve also seen the documentary, The Last Movie Stars, possibly less of a surprise. Talk about a gap between how the world sees someone and how they see themselves! Can recommend wholeheartedly.
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Great idea.
James E Powell
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️:
Ball Four was one of two books that radically changed my view of professional athletes when I was young. The other was Off My Chest by Jim Brown.
Two by musicians I greatly admire: Life by Keith Richards & Unrequited Infatuations by Stevie Van Zandt.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass should be required reading for every American.
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant was recommended by somebody here, I think, and it’s one of the best things I ever read.
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl:
It occurred to me I haven’t read it in a long time (40+ years?) I’m quite sure the main things I picked up from it would still come though, but the details would be very interesting to go over again.
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@CaseyL:
In “The Hustler” the self doubt that eats at Fast Eddie Felson wasn’t acting, that was all him.
frosty
Here’s three good ones I’ve read recently.
Geena Davis – Dying of Politeness. She grew a little more with every movie. League of Their Own led her to realizing she was athletic and picking up archery.
Kathy Valentine (Go-Go’s bass player) – All I Ever Wanted. How she ended up in the first big all-girl rock band, (all she ever wanted) and how it fell apart.
Trevor Noah – Born A Crime. Growing up mixed race in South Africa.
PAM Dirac
@Craig:
Yes, a very clear feeling that there is a lot of shit the big important people aren’t telling us. Of course it was assigned reading in a Jesuit high school (1970-1972 or so). My mother used to complain that all the sons she put thorugh Jesuit high school didn’t go to church anymore. One of my brothers replied, “that’s because they taught us to think”.
Ladyraxterinok
Stefan Zweig’s book Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday. Memoirs of an European).
Zweig was an Austrian Jew and wrote the book in 1934 (I think).
He committed suicide in exile
Pete Downunder
Rewrites by Neil Simon is excellent if you’re interested in playwrights like Moss Hart. I second Act One by Moss Hart. My late father worked with Doc Simon in the early days so there was a connection there.
kalakal
It’s not really an autobiography, more of a memoir of an extraordinary time & journey but A Time of Gifts* by Patrick Leigh Fermor is one of my all time favourite books. I cannot recommend it highly enough
*And the sequel Between the Woods and the Water
trollhattan
Grant’s continues to amaze me–not just the direct, very much not-Victorian era prose but the fact he wrote it while suffering from cancer.
NB Twain did not ghost-write the thing, as has been batted around for a century and a half.
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac:
The Autobiography of Malcom X is on YouTube, for free.
I’m going to listen to it.
Spanky
@PAM Dirac: Yeah, I picked it semi-randomly from the reading list before my AP English class started in September 1971. Quite the eye-opener to that young lily-white kid. It didn’t hurt that it was written by Alex Haley, either.
I’ve been thinking for a while that it needs revisited.
zhena gogolia
@Ladyraxterinok: there’s a good English translation.
CaseyL
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️: Wow! Apparently, there’s a lot of him in The Verdict, too.
Here’s another rec: More an historical novel, told from first person POV, “Creation” by Gore Vidal. The first person in question is a Persian diplomat stationed in Athens during the the 6th-5th Century BCE. Vidal’s black hole-density cynicism can be problematic, but it suits this character very well. Since ancient history is a thing of mine, the book delighted me.
WaterGirl
@frosty: How good was Trevor Noah’s book?
I saw the episodes, it must have been on The Daily Show, where he visited his old grandmother and talked about what it was like to grow up being a crime.
Tehanu
I too was impressed by Moss Hart’s Act One and by both of David Niven’s autobiographies. Just finished reading Shy, the autobiography of Mary Rodgers — daughter of Richard Rodgers of -and-Hammerstein fame, composer of one of my favorite musicals, Once Upon a Mattress, and the author of Freaky Friday — and it is full of absolutely mind-blowing gossip about practically everybody on Broadway. Best story: Mary was a lifelong friend of Stephen Sondheim, whose mother was a nightmare, to the point where Steve actually preferred military school to living with her. One time Mary did something she thought Steve might not like, so she sent him an expensive silver platter as an apology. His reply was, “Thanks for the beautiful platter, but where’s my mother’s head?”
zhena gogolia
Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead is a great prison memoir. Presented as a novel but based closely on his experience.
zhena gogolia
@Tehanu: I have to read that one
WaterGirl
@kalakal: I think maybe we should have a Medium Cool post on Memoirs at some point.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: Sounds good to me
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl: Excellent! I will too.
AliceBlue
Anyone who’s a fan of Blondie should check out Face It by Debbie Harry.
dexwood
@WaterGirl:
Oops, sorry. Life. Commented in haste. Had to leave for a bit, Medium Cool posts just about the time Mrs. dexwood and I leave to feed her 94 year old parents who live a few doors from us. Glad to say they’re still at home, but it won’t last.
piratedan
I really enjoyed The Garner Files: A Memoir was an honest read of a man, who made mistakes but earned his positions of liberalism through experience and compassion.
kalakal
They’re both semi autobiographical novels rather than straight autobiography but
Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are good. The first is very close to a straight autobiography
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: With as many of us who seemed to find the Autobiography of Malcolm X a pivotal book in our lives, maybe we could have a Medium Cool where we talk about the book and the impact it had on each of us.
Jim Bales
I think it is billed as a memoir rather than an autobiography, and it’s been many years since I read it, but I have warm memories of reading Samuel Delany’s “the motion of light in water”.
I once heard him say at a lecture that, as a “black, gay, science-fiction writer” he was a member of three minority groups. His memoir of his time as a young adult focuses on the second 2 of those attributes
best
Jim
WaterGirl
@kalakal: It’s Balloon Juice, so the rules are followed loosely, and sometimes not followed at all. So those are fair game. :-)
Ladyraxterinok
Jessica Mitford’s book The American Way of Death is a. fascinating expose of the funeral business.
She also wrote a book about the American prison system and one about ‘the fine art of muckraking’.
Craig
Chuck D said something about it in an article I read in 86/87 and all my punk rock friends passed around a couple of dog eared copies of it, ‘have you read this?, You have to read this.’
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl: That would be interesting and I would definitely participate. I think the emphasis should be on re-reading (or listening) now and how much (if any) your reaction today differs from your memory of when you first read it.
ETA: of course depending on how many want to participate, many just a theme of “re-reading pivotal books in your life”
dexwood
@Jim Bales:
I should check that out. I loved Dhalgren.
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@CaseyL:
Love Gore. Miss his insight and good matured gossip (loved to talk about his father’s affair with Amelia Earhart). His book on the stolen 1876 presidential election is unfortunately still relevant. His stage play and screenplay “The Best Man” has been consistently ranked in lists of the top 10 of political films.
Craig
@PAM Dirac: that sounds good.
Wyatt Salamanca
Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow
To Be or Not to Bop by Dizzy Gillespie
Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon
This Life by Sidney Poitier
The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois
Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
Guilty of Everything by Herbert Huncke
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
CaseyL
@David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️:
I love his writing. It was quite a shock to me when I realized he was also anti-Semitic; could never read him the same way.
currants
@SpongeBobtheBuilder:
That’s an excellent read.
Sure Lurkalot
I want to thank WG and everyone for this thread…it’s a keeper and I’m going to comb through it for my 2023 reading list.
I’ve read a ton of biographies but I’m at a loss for any unique auto I’ve read which is troubling! I’m embarrassed to admit I read Alan Greenspan’s…it was given to me so at least I didn’t pay for it. The US would be in a much better place without his wrong ideas.
middlelee
A Child of the Century, by screenwriter Ben Hecht.
currants
@Starfish: I read that in one sitting. It was the first time I’d read anything so close to my own experience growing up (minus “home schooling” and apocalyptic cult, though my church from a distance is certainly pretty close to a cult) and I felt–I don’t know, this will sound strange, but I felt as if I were real, finally.
Albatrossity
You might enjoy Boys and Oil, a recent autobiography by my friend Taylor Brorby. Here’s the NYT review. Also Hope Lahren’s Lab Girl, and Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland (one of the best books I’ve read in many years).
Jim Bales
@dexwood: I suspect you will find it interesting, the creation of Dahlgren comes up in his memoir.
I found the forward fascinating, giving an interesting insight into memory and how it works
Since it sounds like there’s a reasonable chance you will read it, I will say no more!
Best,
Jim
Montanareddog
The War Diaries of Victor Klemperer, published in 3 volumes in the 1990s are a powerful read. VK, was a German Jew who survived the Third Reich and kept a diary during the entire period. It gives a detailed individual perspective of the descent into horror.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Trevor Noah’s book was so good I gave copies to my millenial kids because I’m sure they’d like it.
SiubhanDuinne
@PaulB:
By coincidence, I read 84, Charing Cross Road — for the countlessth time — just this afternoon!
Jobeth
@WaterGirl: Not to speak for Frosty but I really enjoyed Noah’s book. His mom was quite a formidable woman and his stories about her are told with lots of love and humor. The book also gives a good idea of what it was like making a life under apartheid. I learned a lot from it.
MaryRC
@Zuleika: Biographies of the Mitford sisters are always entertaining but if you are easily creeped out you might want to avoid the auto-biography of Diana Mitford, wife of Sir Oswald Mosley the leader of the British Union of Fascists, which is chilling in her lack of empathy for everyone except herself and her family. Oh, and Magda Goebbels – she felt very, very sorry for Magda.
@zhena googlia: The Pursuit of Love is funny but I think Love in a Cold Climate is funnier; if you haven’t tried it, I’m sure you would enjoy it. For me, a little of Linda in The Pursuit of Love goes a long way and I think Nancy Mitford must have thought this too because Linda rarely makes an appearance in Love in a Cold Climate. Love in a Cold Climate must have seemed daring in its day because it features a gay man who has a wonderful time and a happy ending, but all the characters are fun.
SiubhanDuinne
@frosty:
I have meant to read Trevor Noah’s book for a while now, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Thanks for mentioning it and pulling it back into my awareness.
kalakal
@Montanareddog: A very good choice
prostratedragon
@Montanareddog: I read long excerpts of that in magazine when it came out. Very well written and an interesting, if harrowing story. Obvious collateral reading might include the Autobiography of Harriet Jacobs and the Diary of Anne Frank.
Mokum
Speak Memory by Nabokov is pretty amazing writing.
Omnes Omnibus
@MaryRC:
The portrayal of Diana in Peaky Blinders is pretty spot on.
MaryRC
@frosty: I’m halfway through Born A Crime and it’s fascinating. His parents had to pretend that he wasn’t their child on numerous occasions. His mother once had to throw him out of a moving taxi (she jumped with him).
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac:
Yes, I was thinking of a something along those same lines. But of course anyone who read the book and didn’t re-read or listen to the radio version could participate.
And hey, it’s Balloon Juice, so folks could participate even if they never read the book! :-)
pajaro
I’m not sure if this counts, but I loved Blood, Bones and Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton.
Miss Bianca
@Warren Senders: Musicians’ autobiographies are definitely fun, particularly rock and rollers’. In addition to Crazy From the Heat I would recommend Grace Slick’s autobiography, Somebody to Love?
She is one of my rock and roll heroines and she’s hilarious, to boot – smart and sarcastic and irreverent.
WaterGirl
@pajaro: You are at comment #110, of course it counts!
Suzanne
I just broke down and ordered Prince Harry’s book.
I’m such trash.
Leto
This isn’t an autobiography, per se; it’s a documentary about Robert Caro and his editor, Robert Gottlieb. I know how beloved Caro’s work is, and this is a further insight into that. It’s only premiered at Tribecca, and I’m not sure when it’s coming out/where/etc…
Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb
Anyways, thought it was fitting to put it here considering his work.
BC in Illinois
I have read and enjoyed/learned from both of Jason Kander’s autobiographies:
Invisible Storm begins with the narrative of him introducing himself to a VA counselor, telling the man about about his political background and the encouragement that Barack Obama had given him. The counselor asks him how he often he hears voices.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: Maybe we should have a Medium Cool where folks post a short one-paragraph book report on a favorite book?
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Did you watch their Netflix specials?
Dangerman
For a nice little read, the book by Dwier Brown (Field of Dreams Father) is wonderful. Not to long until Pitchers and Catchers report. Time for Baseball.
ETA: “If You Build It … “
Miss Bianca
@Wyatt Salamanca:
That’s a great one!
WaterGirl
@Leto: Of course it is!
H.E.Wolf
Oh yes. :-) I’m just wild about Harry!
Miss Bianca
@MaryRC: Didn’t Nancy Mitford also write Zelda, the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald? That’s another good read, but so sad.
WaterGirl
@Dangerman: LOVE Field of Dreams!
But what daddy’s girl wouldn’t? Especially one who used to go to baseball games with her dad in Chicago. What I wouldn’t give to have one more day with my dad. He died 28 years ago today.
Ohio Mom
@SpongeBobtheBuilder: You didn’t describe The Color of Water — I will try but I don’t think I can do it justice, especially since I read it so long ago.
McBride’s mother grew up very Jewish and poor in a small town in a loveless family in all-around miserable conditions. As an adult, she married a Black man and had many children, one of whom, James, wrote this book with much affection and love for her.
She became very active in a Black church (was her second husbanda pastor, I’m not sure I remember correctly). As a much older adult and empty nester, she went to college and became a social worker.
Anyway, the fascinating aspect of this book is that for all intents and purposes, the mother completely changed her identity. She didn’t pretend to be a Black Christian, she was. Indirectly the story raises so many questions about what identity is and how much of your identity you can create and still be authentically you.
I noticed when it first came out, this book was very impulse among middle class Jewish women. Which raises lots of questions too.
ETA: The color of water is what the mother tells James is the color of God.
H.E.Wolf
omg, I think I read that one! Thank you for the reminder – I may go back and re-read it.
Suzanne
@WaterGirl: Nah, I never get to control the TV!
Gin & Tonic
@PAM Dirac: There’s an extended riff in Gravity’s Rainbow based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
H.E.Wolf
You are living proof that he was a wonderful person. May your best memories of him be with you always.
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: Thank you for that!
Question. In your last paragraph before the edit, is impulse an autocorrect?
H.E.Wolf
Okay, I’ll be in the wind for the rest of the evening. Thank you to everyone for this treasure trove of books to be read!
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for stopping by!
lowtechcyclist
Of the books mentioned in this thread that I’ve already read, Ulysses S. Grant’s autobiography and Jim Bouton’s Ball Four are definitely the standouts.
The only autobiography I can think of that I’ve read that’s not been mentioned here is Lauren Bacall’s By Myself. Worth reading if you’re a fan of hers.
I never read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was never required of us in school. Also, not only was hearing over the radio of his being shot the first thing I’d ever heard of him, it was practically the last for many years, so it never really crossed my mind to read his book. But I think I’ll have to now.
@AliceBlue:
I’m a big fan of Deborah Harry and Blondie. I’ll check it out!
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl:
Of course! You can always skip the hideously misinformed and clueless responses, or if worse comes to worse the pie filter is always available :-) Speaking of which I want a respond option which sends the text “That’s the sort of blinkered, Philistine pig ignorance I’ve come to expect from you
Non-creative garbage”. Maybe with a picture of a burning block of flats.
kalakal
@prostratedragon:
The most chilling book I have ever read is Conversations with an Executioner by Kazimierz Moczarski. Moczarski was an officer in the Polish Home Army in WW2 who was imprisoned by the Stalinists after the war During his imprisonment he spent 9 months in a cell with Jurgen Stroop ( the senior SS officer in charge of the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the destruction of the Ghetto ) before Stroop’s execution. Stroop was completely unrepentant and arrogant to the end, he held nothing back in his conversations with Moczarski.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_with_an_Executioner
Dangerman
@WaterGirl: I think you would love DB’s book.
ETA: Condolences on the anniversary.
PAM Dirac
@Dangerman:
Why time begins on Opening Day
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: You have clearly thought this through!
If you like, I could add your quote to the part of the pie filter that you see if you choose quotations rather than the pie images, which are the default.
But you have to choose, pictures or quotes. You can’t have both at the same time.
edit: I should go back and read the dessert quotes for the pie filter. I spent an entire afternoon looking for good dessert-related quotes and copying them for inclusion in the pie filter.
For that matter I wonder if anyone has ever selected quotes instead of dessert images!
SFBayAreaGal
@Miss Bianca: She is also a painter
WaterGirl
@Dangerman: My dad told me about the baseball scandal when I was a kid, and I was shocked. So that resonated with me in the movie, too.
I can’t recall the name they had for the scandal, can you?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Blacksox?
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Ooh, let me know if it’s good!
lowtechcyclist
@PAM Dirac:
By Thomas Boswell. He was a counselor for several years at the summer camp I attended for a few years (he mentions the camp in How Life Imitates the World Series), then became a junior counselor at. I haven’t seen him since 1969, but I still have fond memories of him. He was a genuinely good person, and I’m sure he still is. During the year I was a junior counselor, we’d stay up and try to pick up the Nats (v. 2.0) games on the radio. He already knew he wanted to become a sportswriter, and obviously he succeeded in that.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Nope, that’s not it. I could pick the right answer on a multiple choice test!
Warren Senders
@Wyatt Salamanca: “Really The Blues” — can’t believe I forgot that one. What an amazing read.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeppers, the Black Sox.
Ohio Mom
@WaterGirl: No, “impulse” should have been “popular”. Another combo of bad typing and an impish spellcheck.
Zuleika
@Miss Bianca:
No, it was Nancy Milford, not Nancy Mitford, that wrote the Zelda biography.
Shana
Shy by Mary Rogers is fabulous and hilarious.
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: That was my guess, because that word would have fit, but there were so few letters in common that I had to ask!
PAM Dirac
@WaterGirl:
Naaah, I don’t want to see the quote, I want the lowlifes that befoul Balloon Juice with their drivel to feel the cut of
myMonty Python’s wit :-)Omnes Omnibus
@Montanareddog: One of his cousins was Werner Klemperer, TV’s Colonel Klink.
Geminid
@trollhattan: I thought very highly of Ullysses Grant’s memoirs, as I think very highly of the man. The chapters on the Civil War are valuable as history, but I think Grant’s accounts of his earlier life are especially good.
And you are right: Samuel Clemens did not write that book. The prose is distinctive, a model of efficient writing that is clearly Grant’s work product.
WaterGirl
@PAM Dirac: ha!
kalakal
There is only one Sortabiography – Eric Idle’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life and very good it is too
prostratedragon
@kalakal: You know, I’d just have to pray that my faith was not in vain as I pulled the switch on that monster.
Dangerman
Blacksox is correct. 8 Men Out is a fine movie.
Shoeless Joe got screwed.
It’s time for Dodgers baseball.
/vin
Vin Scully and Coach Wooden did a sit down along the way. Lovely conversation, probably on Youtube someplace. They were neighbors right after Coach moved out from the midwest. Historical accident but a lovely one.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: Hmm, well maybe that’s it, but that’s not what I remember. Maybe I am thinking of shoeless Joe. oh well.
MaryRC
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve just started the season where the Mosleys show up and I haven’t see Diana yet but I’m looking forward to it.
prostratedragon
In the original waltz time: “I’m Just Wild About Harry”.
Omnes Omnibus
@MaryRC:
You’ve a treat coming.
PAM Dirac
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes for many years I read his columns religiously. I thought George Will’s baseball writings were pathetic, but for a long time Boswell really showed insights coming out of a keen interest in the game and players, rather than someone who is too smart for you peons and above it all.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: Given how popular the On the Road posts are perhaps one on Jackal’s favourite travel books?
mali muso
@Suzanne: Come sit by me. I pre-ordered the audiobook ages ago. :-)
Gary K
A huge upvote for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Douglass actually wrote three autobiographies, each time incorporating much of the previous one. The tale of his early life is powerful. In his final autobiography, however, he seems less than frank about events toward the end of his life, and eventually just pads the account with second-string orations.
Shana
@Leto: I hope to god Robert Caro lives long enough to finish his LBJ series. I understand there’s only a last volume to be published so I have hopes.
I have a fondness for I’m With the Band by Pamela des Barres, a memoir of her time as a groupie in the 70s in LA. Which may or may not give you insight to my character.
Shana
@WaterGirl: Cubs or Sox?
Ken
A few days ago we hit on a possible biographical topic: People who are victims of “it’s a better story that way”. Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, or Richard III in Shakespeare’s play, are examples.
MaryRC
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is harrowing but worth it; a true story of being raised by parents who were incapable of looking after children, but who somehow managed to inspire her. It’s hard not to hate her parents while you read her story, but she never does.
MaryRC
@Miss Bianca: Close, but no — you’re thinking of Nancy Milford. I agree, good book but a sad life at the end.
Leto
@Shana:
at the link there’s a short 2 min trailer and that’s one of the things someone comments on. 1) I hope they both live long enough to complete the book/journey and 2) I hope he leaves all his material behind, has someone lined , just in case.
Craig
@middlelee: oh damn. Off to the library tomorrow. Thanks.
MaryRC
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll bet. Can’t wait.
Craig
@Leto: I heard him interviewed on NPR while driving with my mum. Super interesting guy. I need to watch that flick.
laura
An Autobiography of Malcolm X post would be swell. The Six is a pretty good Mitford Sisters biography. This is a post that could grow exponentially because there is no end of interesting people, and because everyone has a story so compelling you’d be in awe of life’s rich pageant a goodly portion of your day. And that’s not nothing.
MaryRC
@Shana: I’ll never forget the story of LBJ as a young congressman bringing electricity to the Hill Country in Caro’s first book The Path to Power. There’s a photo somewhere of LBJ turning on the electric light for the first time in the home of a woman who is stooped over after many years of hauling water in buckets.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d be interested in a discussion of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but I’ve never read it and I read slowly these days.
Leto
@Craig: @MaryRC: Here’s the NPR interview. Quick 7 min interview, and at the link is the full transcript.
Lizzie Gottlieb talks ‘Turn Every Page’ documentary
Pete Downunder
Someone above mentioned travel books which reminded me of my favorite travel writer – Bill Bryson – read In A Sunburned Country about Australia. It’s great. Anyway Bryson wrote an autobiography about his childhood called the The Thunderbolt Kid which is excellent as are all his books.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Molly Ivins’ obituary for her friend Jessica Mitford.
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@MaryRC:
Who can forget his famous campaign slogan:
Hey, Hey, LBJ
How many bulbs
Did you light today
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@Shana:
Love Pamela’s section on Jimmy Page
LiminalOwl
@billcinsd: And wrote You Can’t Take It With You, which I adored. I don’t think I’ve read Act One, and I need to remedy that.
I haven’t read very many autobiographies, but a pair that made a strong impression were Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown (a present from my father) and Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody (from my mother), both when I was in eighth grade.
Recently, Gene Wilder’s Kiss Me Like a Stranger. Not wonderful, alas, but fun if you’re a Gene Wilder fan. Which I have been since… also eighth grade, I think. Hmm.
I recommend The Cooking Gene, by Michael Twitty, very highly.
Charles Blow’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones too.
coin operated
Going to have to bookmark this thread. So many good stories to check out. I’ve been a Trevor Noah fan since he took over TDS…the man’s wit is rapier sharp. Definitely going to have to read that one.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
Sorry. This made me laugh.
We look forward to your review.
Craig
@Shana: oh shit. I forgot about that book. It’s such a great read. A buddy of mine from school republished in like 20 years ago and went to the Berlin book showcase with Pamela to promote it. Crazy stories.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato:
Well, I can say that he looks a whole lot better than William at this point.
William is tied with Brad Pitt for the title of Man Who Used to be Good-Looking Who Now Looks Really Bad.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Leto:
Saw it yesterday at Film Forum in NY. Caro and Gottlieb both have greater mental acuity than many individuals decades younger than them. It’s one of the best documentary films I’ve seen in the last five years.
kalakal
@Shana:
Me too. It’s truly brilliant
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
Another political/historical bio “In Retrospect” by Robert McNamara was good.
I also like David Axelrod’s “True Believer”.
Leto
@Wyatt Salamanca: I, like so many others, eagerly await for it to hit a streaming service.
Jacel
@H.E.Wolf: The Piccolo book includes Willson’s experience playing that instrument in Sousa’s band. The other two books are “Eggs I Have Laid” — a series of chapters each depicting an incident in his life, scattered throughout time, each concluding with his personal embarrassment or failure. A book focused on his long development of “The Music Man” is titled “But He Doesn’t Know The Territory!”
I hope you had a chance to see the TV series in which Truman looked back on his career and times in a seemingly candid attitude. Seeing “Decisions: The Conflicts Of Harry S. Truman” when it aired in my youth probably shaped my awareness of history and government more than anything else.
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/audiovisual-materials/screen-gems/decision-conflicts
Redshift
I greatly enjoyed Graham Chapman’s A Liar’s Autobiography. I think most of it was even true.
Leslie
I have not read many autobiographies, but one that hasn’t been mentioned here yet is Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It’s been years, but it made an impression on me.
This is a great thread. So many books to add to my TBR list!
TiredOfItAll
More memoir than autobiography: Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Pair it with Stacy Schiff’s terrific biography of Saint-Ex. Next up: recently I learned of Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas, and will be looking for it at my local library branch. Thank you for this post!
Craig
I’m looking for the difference between memoir and autobiography. Serious question, and too lit/lazy to go down a Google hole. Appreciate any insight.
Sure Lurkalot
@kalakal: Now that you mention in it, BJ’s very own OTR segments are autobiographies of a kind.
Jacel
Two older autobiographical books that impacted me.
“The Journal Of John Woolman” conveyed the experience of a Quaker abolitionist through the clearest prose in the English language I have ever seen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woolman
“The Journal Of A Disappointed Man” is a striking but somewhat fictionalized autobiography, in that the pseudonymous author is said to have died after the last published entry, but the actual author lived a further two years and completed another book.
kalakal
@Craig: An autobiography is a factual account of someones life from beginning to the date of the book. A memoir is when someone relates their memories and/or experiences of a specific time period.
LiminalOwl
@LiminalOwl: oops, accidental duplicate. WaterGirl, could you kindly delete? And condolences on your yahrzeit.
Raven
Tobias Wolff
In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War
prostratedragon
@LiminalOwl: Glad to be reminded of the Claude Brown, which I read back when it came out. One of many that have become part of m e somehow, but of whivh I need a reminder.
Terence Blanchard’s opera from Blow’s memoir is outstanding. Has been done by the Met and Lyric.
Fake Irishman
@James E Powell:
Grant’s memoirs are outstanding. He is an extraordinary writer, primarily about military campaigns, but you get a wonderful bit of his nuanced thoughts of the world around him. He was perceptive; I’d argue not always right, but thoughtful enough to be interesting and worth arguing with at the least.
I also enjoyed Katherine Graham’s “Personal History” She gets to be a fly on the wall for a lot of good history, but watching her reflect on how she grappled with her insecurities and painful shyness, and the mental illness, abuse and suicide of her husband and grew into the role of the Post’s owner is pretty amazing. I really enjoyed her reflection on how she evolved her thinking on the women’s movement in the 1970s and started seeing herself as a part of it instead of apart from it.
Fake Irishman
@Pete Downunder:
loved the Thunderbolt kid! Really great perceptive on a 1950s idealized childhood (and what a shit he could be)
Msb
Frederick Douglass’ autobiographies, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Eighty Years and More. Billie Jean King’s book All In.
J R in WV
@patrick II:
This book [Goodby Darkness] was the most devastating picture of the Pacific war I have ever heard about! Manchester was in the thick of fighting on several island invasion battles, and if I recall correctly was left for dead at one point.
My Uncle was a member of heavy bomber crews from Guam to Burma during the whole Pacific campaign and lived with severe PTSD for the rest of his life, waking from horrible nightmares screaming, and to his family he was a kind and caring hero I will always respect.
Reading Manchester’s book gave me some understanding of Bill’s experiences in the Pacific War. I think he would have been happy to have flown on either of the final bombing missions of the war, but would have had different and worse PTSD as a result!
Which ever front of WWII I have read about more recently seems to have been the worst possible experience… I’m fortunate to have known men who fought in that war, and have learned greatly from knowing and hearing them tell of their experiences in the front lines of that dreadful war!
J R in WV
@BC in Illinois:
Do you mean to say that his VA counselor believed that he hallucinated his memories of working with Obama?
That would seem to create a huge barrier for me — how could one develop any kind of trust with someone who leaped to a conclusion like that?
NotMax
Late to arrive. Life intervened.
For many years devoured biographies and autobiographies by the shelf load and suddenly can’t dredge up a single title save Benjamin Franklin’s and the diary of Samuel Pepys.
@Pete Downunder
Ooh, travel books. Brain functioning enough to rattle some off.
Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey by Ralph Leighton
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures In Arabia by Tony Horwitz
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
.
Miss Bianca
@Shana: I’m With the Band is awesome. So if liking it says something about your character, well…for better or for worse, I’m right there with you. :)
WaterGirl
@kalakal: oooh, good idea!
WaterGirl
@Shana: My Dad and I were White Sox all the way. My mom was Cubs.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe having the post in a month or so would be good timing?
StringOnAStick
I want to add my support for how good Trevor Noah’s book is.
One memoir I wish I hadn’t read is Shawn Colvin’s. I still like her music (but it’s fading with time) though I wish I didn’t know what a shallow and self centered emotionally destructive force she’s been to pretty much everyone in her life. I suspect she’s mentally ill based on her descriptions of childhood events, and I give her credit for realizing she shouldn’t be in any kind of couples relationship thanks to therapy, though as she describes herself, I wonder if she’s stuck to that vow. She has a daughter and I hope that kid has gotten all the professional help she needs, but her mom says the only thing she’ll inherit is her”amazing collection of clothes” because that’s what she says she spends all her money on and saves nothing. Well, that and therapy I guess. I’m surprised her editor didn’t read the draft and try to tone it down a bit.
Paul in KY
Sure it’s been mentioned many times up above, but “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” is a powerful book
Edit: PAM Dirac at #30
Shana
@WaterGirl: A mixed marriage!
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
@WaterGirl:
That sparks a memory: great autobiography “Veeck as in Wreck” by 1970s White Sox owner and showman Bill Veeck.