He goes on a bit.
Nag, nag, nag.
The dude can write, I'll give him that. He can weave a sentence beautifully, but the paranoia thing gets to me. It's all about 'them' and 'they' and 'the cops' and 'the government' as if they are a coherent and singular entity out to trod on him personally.
This book is a series of anecodtes, vignettes and reminisces, but in the end, all I got from it was that he smoked too much pot and was paranoid. There was some touching moments, some laugh out loud moments, but mostly groan moments as I was forced to enter deep into his paranoid psyche.
I did however find, buried deep on page 289, something that made me think he was aware that perhaps he was largely acting the goat... he wrote about his relationships with 'the cops': "They were probably nice people and so was I - but we were not meant for each other... There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this Earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other..."
That was one of the only moments in the book where he conceded that 'they' might be people as well.
Still, his rebellious nature does make for some fine reading at times, but better to read an article here and there rather than a whole book.
I give it C minus.
(That's two reviews in two days - I have some catching up to do)
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3 comments:
This is exactly why I have so little patience for autobiographies: so much goatishness (and paranoia), so little reflection. Give me a biography of Hunter S. any day over his autobiography. Better yet, give me a novel.
Elias Canetti, who wrote one novel (a brilliant one, mind you - 'Auto Da Fe'), had the gall to write a 1,300 page autobiography.
Baw. Ring.
I second your motion.
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