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Another memoir, and here’s where that voyeurism I admitted to kicks into high gear. Not much like walking that walk than do it in the Manolos of a NYC escort before the fall. No, not a former president, nor even Ted Turner, but not the sort of humdrum life one gets a glimpse into everyday either.

The Price, is the story of Natalie McClennan’s very fast and furious rise from obscure Canadian ex-pat partygirl and wannabe actress to top paid Queen of the Call Girls at New York Confidential, and equally rapid and jarring descent to reality–all within about a year’s time. It isn’t a story of recovery or of self-pity, for that matter. Most of the space is devoted to who did what with whom and for how much (though Natalie maintains her integrity with regard to naming famous names–she doesn’t–which she maintained would unnecessarilt destroy families), and what everyone was wearing. The business dynamics, the recruiting, and the relationships withing the organization, which was in a constant state of flux, is also interesting, considering how much money flowed through it at any given time. And while the sex is not gratuitous–what’s a story about hookers without sex–what sex there is would be considered pretty explicit (fair warning). The story received a lot of coverage a year or two ago–Larry King, Paula Zahn, and so forth–none of which I tuned in to. If you followed the case, the book will be a no brainer, and it’s an interesting current events read on its own. If not, it might be fun to Google it afterward, and see what became of the rest of the menagerie–or where they’ve set up shop now!

Talk Radio, Reality TV, People Magazine, Google, YouTube, yes, even blogging–and I’m sure I’m leaving some out–we are, now, more than ever, as a society, at the apex of voyeurism. Perhaps the mildest evidence of this is the popularity of the memoir. I have always been an avid reader, and I can remember, when I was younger, that there were biographies and autobiographies on library and bookstore shelves. I remember this, because when we were kids, we had a tough time remembering which was which. At some point, the autobiography was replaced by the “memoir,” but, even then, it was people of note who were penning their life stories for public consumption–ex-presidents, religious leaders, really- famous-people-who-had-interesting-lives-we-were-curious-about. Not so today. Today the most mundane of lives are handed up for published posterity, which I find ironic in a time when the death knell of the book is also constantly being sounded. In just the past few months I have read a number of memoirs (I’m happy to cop to my love of peering into the lives of others, especially if it makes mine appear more functional) and, by and large, they have been nothing special–the lives or the writers–even the ones that I admit I somewhat enjoyed. We are not so desperate for reading material that we have to publish everyone’s story; I don’t have to work in publishing to know that, so what gives? These aren’t sensational books, so even that often used justification won’t fly. I don’t know the answer, but the question haunts me, mostly because I have to wonder what of merit isn’t getting published instead–and why.

I am off on this jag again after finishing John Grogan’s The Longest Trip Home. Grogan is the author of the incredibly popular Marley & Me, which has recently been made into a movie, opening at Christmas. I haven’t read Marley & Me, but I can almost guarantee–or at least hope–that this latest memoir would not have been picked up without the previous book, because there is nothing special about this guy’s life. Seriously. Do people now become memoir-worthy because they have had a best seller about their dog? Apparently they do! Don’t get me wrong, Grogan is a good writer, and it’s a sweet story; it just isn’t any sweeter than the story of the family I grew up next door to, and I think they’d be surprised to find that they were that interesting to the world at large. Because maybe they’re not!

A little about the book itself. Grogan grew up in a medium-sized Irish-Catholic family in an upper middle class suburb on a lake. He had three pals he hung around with until college, although they drifted a bit in high school. His parents were devout, becoming more fundamental as they aged, but none of the kids ended up being religious (as was the case in many Catholic families of that generation and the following in my experience). He went off to college. He struggled with lying to his parents about not being devout. He married. He watched them grow old. That’s about it. He had a great life and a close, loving family, albeit with religious differences. No lesson for us to learn. He did nothing of note in the world. But he can turn a phrase (and his last book was made into a movie).

The autobiography is dead. Long live the memoir. At least the bookstore shelves will never be empty. There are plenty of ordinary, unaccomplished people yet to tell their stories!

Adam Nimoy’s new book is My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life– An Anti-Memoir. Adam’s father, Leonard Nimoy found his fame as Mr. Spock in the short-run (only 3 seasons, believe it or not), but long syndicated and wildly popular Star Trek series of the 1960s, but Adam’s childhood was shaped as much by his father’s hardscrabble upbringing as by his stardom.

“I’ve never had much luck arguing with him. Have you ever argued with a Pop Culture Icon? Have you ever argued with a guy who can cause a frenzy among thousands at a convention hall simply by performing a Vulcan hand salute?

Because when you’re dealing with a man who’s adored by millions of fans the world over, when you lock horns with a man from the tenement streets of Boston who clawed his way to the top of the Hollywood heap, good luck with the argument.”

Nimoy senior also struggled with alcohol and later became sober himself. Complicated as their relationship may have been, being the son of Leonard figures very little in the book, which focuses mainly on the year that Nimoy separated from his wife, moved out of the family home, and became active in AA. He writes honestly and extensively about the pain of being apart from his son and daughter, who both refused to stay at his new apartment and often cried and begged him to move back into the house. In one scene, the children were supposed to have dinner with him at the apartment, but daughter, Maddy, changes her mind at the last minute and asks to be taken home immediately. In the car, she unleashes a tirade:

“How can you do this to me? I’m through with you, Dad. How do you feel about never seeing me again? I will never, ever come back to your stupid apartment. How do you think it will feel to live alone for the rest of your life?”

And this toward the father who still picks her up and takes her to school every morning, helps with her homework every afternoon, and whom she will profess undying love for by the end of most days. The divorcing dad stuff is very powerful and spot-on.

Interwoven are anecdotes about hot women he meets at AA meetings, bright moments he experiences as a teacher, stupid things that derailed his directorial career, and the occasional story about life with Dad.

My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life contains no revelation or inspiration of note, and reads like a cleaned up, neatened up two-year diary of a nice guy giving up pot and getting divorced, whose dad just happened to be a Vulcan.

It’s a question that has to come up fairly regularly in the publishing community, and certainly in the recovery world: how much of what I remember really happened the way I remember it? David Carr decided to use his skills as an investigative reporter to investigate his own life. Instead of just writing his memoir of addiction from memory, he took a video camera, pulled legal and medical records, and crisscrossed the country tracking down old sources, dealers, family and friends to gain a different perspective on what those coke snorting, crack smoking, hard-drinking years were like from the other side. The result is The Night of the Gun.

“A drunk or a junkie will end up finding fellow travelers in the course of things. If you are a drunk, the guy down the bar who falls off his stool and then gets up, sits down, and orders another is your friend. He may be a peckerwood whomakes speeches about the Twins or the Vikings or the mayor, but he is, after a fashion, your guy. In the same way, an addict will find his or her own level and his or her tribe to go with it. As in a lot of cities in the mid-to-late eighties, coke was ubiqutous in Minneapolis. But while vast swatches of people did a line here or there, there was a self-selected tribe who did little else.”

Unfortunately, reporting on one’s addiction seems to be a lot less interesting than remembering it firsthand. What the memoir gained in accuracy, it lost in intimacy and raw emotion. The most interesting tidbit for me turned out to be Carr’s high praise for his buddy Tom Arnold, whom he credits with being one of the most solid and supportive people in recovery he has known. His memoir I’d like to read!

Churched is a pleasant little mini memoir from Matthew Paul Turner about his experiences as a child growing up surrounded by Baptist fundamentalists, at home, at school, and three times a week for church services and Sunday school. He writes about the importance of Jesus and hell in his young life, very clear boundaries within which he could operate that, although he later rejected fundamentalism, seem to have provided a measure of safety and security at the time. His parents may have been extreme in their religious beliefs by many standards, but by Turner’s account were loving, supportive, and present in their children’s lives. The stories are sweet and quirky, easily read in a day. Those readers who are outraged at the very hint of fundamentalism will no doubt be appalled, but if one sets aside that general bias, there isn’t anything shocking or bizarre here. Despite the cover copy, I found no “holy mess,” nothing “bizarre” and laughed out loud when I saw the caption “He spent his childhood trapped within the confines of countless bizarre, strict rules. And lived to tell about it.” Seriously. The man moved to Nashville and made a career writing about Jesus–I think he’s recovered!

Again, scooping the Times Book Review (delusions of grandeur being half the fun of blogging), Michael Greenberg’s Hurry Down Sunshine is reviewed this week. The following is an excerpt:

“On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad. She was fifteen and her crack-up marked a turning point in both our lives. ‘I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,’ she said in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place I could not dream of or imagine. I wanted to grab her and bring her back, but there was no turning back.”  

For more of my take on the book, refer to the post called “Bipolar Mania Continues” in the July 2008 Archives at right.

I just read that a movie of The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd) has been made. I fell in love with that book when I read it, as did everyone I gave it to. I would have to read it again to begin to remember the story, but I don’t want to do that, and then see the film, which will no doubt pale in comparison. Nonetheless, it was a film project seven years in development and has what sounds like a tremendous cast, including Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, and Dakota Fanning. There is already a paperback out with the cast on the cover. I found Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, to be a huge disappointment, but she does a lot of spiritual writing, and I have yet to sample that aspect of her work. The movie hits theaters in October.

More wisdom from The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist, which began with the previous post:

“Money flows through all our lives, sometimes like a rushing river, and sometimes like a trickle. When it is flowing, it can purify, cleanse, create growth, and nourish. But when it is blocked or held too long, it can grow stagnant and toxic to those withholding or hoarding it.

Like water, money is a carrier. It can carry blessed energy, possibility, and intention, or it can carry control, domination, and guilt. It can be a current or a currency of love–a conduit for commitment–or a carrier of hurt or harm. We can be flooded with money and drown in its excess, and when we dam it up unnecessarily, we keep it out of circulation to the detrimant of others.”

Twist goes on to point out that Mother Teresa, whom she idolized and eventually visited, kept no cash reserves, and that “her method of fund-raising was to pray, and that God had always provided what she needed…” Mother Teresa operated more than 400 centers in 102  countries with “just enough.” Twist does not suggest that everyone operate without cash reserve, just to be aware that money, like every aspect of life, carries positive or negative energy.

With that in mind, she asks some interesting questions:

“Do you know the flow of money in your life? Are you mindful of how it comes to you? Are you consciously allocating where you want your money to go? When you can see the way money flows through your life, it gives you power to see where you are in your relationship with it and where you want to go with it….

The way money flows to you and through you to other purposes isn’t unrelated to your life. Does your money come to you through work, relationships, or perhaps existing wealth that carries the energy of nourishing generative commitments and values? Or does it come to you through work or relationships that deplete or exploit you, other people, or the environment? An unhealthy relationship with the way you acquire money is something that can suppress your life. The way we earn it and the way we spend it have an effect. It matters.”

If this has your attention, I recommend the picking up a copy of the book and one of those new highlighter/Post-it combo pens. And may we all improve our money karma…

I began reading The Soul of Money when a chapter was handed out for a reading at work. I don’t read a lot of what I would classify as “self-help” books, but money is an issue everywhere right now–in my life, in my clients’ lives, in my work, in the situation of the economy in general–and I decided to forge ahead and see what inspiration I might be able to take from a book that offered a non-traditional perspective on the role of money in the world and our individual lives. As much as I admit to still struggling with non-fiction, Lynne Twist has very powerful insights, ideas, and experiences to share, so much so that I decided to share them as I went along, figuring I’m not the only one who may benefit from some positive inspiration about money right now.

Lynne Twist has is quick to point out that she is not an economist, banker or investment advisor, and holds no degree in finance. Her education has come through practical experience, with four decades “of fund-raising and work on four major global initiatives: to end world hunger; to protect the rain forest; to improve health, economic, and political conditions for women; and to advance the scientific understanding of human consciousness.” For more than twenty years, she worked as an executive of The Hunger Project, an experience from which she draws much of the material for this book. She describes the book as follows:

“This book is entitled The Soul of Money, but it is really about our own soul and how and why we often eclipse it, dismiss it, or compromise it in our relationship with money: the way we get money, use money, give money, and or sometimes just try to avoid thinking about money. This book is about finding a new freedom, truth, and joy in our relationship with money, this strange, troubled, and wonderful part of our lives. And it is about awakening and using the unexamined portal of our relationship with money to deliver a widespread transformation in all aspects of our life. Ultimately, this book is a pathway to personal and financial freedom.”

I’m all for that. But cautiously optimistic. Next: Money is Like Water

Walking Through Walls is Philip Smith’s memoir of his father, Lewis Smith, who, at first introduction, is a chic, in-demand interior designer in Miami in the 1950’s. His clients included celebrities, socialites and, if memory serves, a couple of foreign dictators, one of whom held him hostage until the work was completed.  This alone would have been sufficient fodder for an entertaining memoir, but there was much more to Lew Smith than met the eye. What began as an interest in macrobiotics, health food, and ancient religions, bloomed–to the great surprise of his family–into an ability to communicate with the universe. Lew Smith was a psychic healer. He began by laying on hands, and eventually communicated with spirits, performed exorcisms, and did all kinds of other stuff that frankly I have a reeeeally hard time believing. In fact, had the book not been so engaging, so heartfelt and funny, I would probably not have finished it. But it was, and so I basically just decided to suspend my disbelief and proceed as if Philip Smith’s father was no more incredible than an alcoholic or schizophrenic or any other dysfunctional dad of memoir material. With that qualification, I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot. It was described on the jacket as “Running with Scissors meets Bewitched.” The TV witch reference seems a little over the top, even for a skeptic like me, but the Augusten Burroughs comparison is pretty apt.

Here’s an excerpt:

“‘My, aren’t you a cutie!’ She leaned closer to me and took a drag off her cigarette. As she exhaled, her ample sunburnt breasts, spilling out of her black fishnet one-piece, bobbed up and down against my face. Dressed in my blue blazer, bow tie, khaki shorts, and freshly shined Buster Browns, I was, at six years old, an irresistible magnet for drunken middle-aged women looking for love. Mom always insisted that if I were going to sit at the bar and drink that I at least be well dressed.”

Philip Smith is an artist and writer who lives in New York and Miami.

So, I just realized that countless posts ago I said I was going to write about Eric Maisel’s The van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression. Near as I can tell, I never did. Which is a shame, because the book had an impact on me at the time, and I’m not a big fan of “self-help” books. This one I actually took a yellow highlighter to. So unlike me. Maisel also started “creativity coaching,” and after finishing the book, I went online and looked up coaches in my area. Blogging will have to pay a whole lot better before it gets beyond window shopping, but the book was pretty motivating.

The basic premise is that creative people need life to have meaning, and therefore need always to make meaning. When life is not meaningful, they become depressed. The key to avoiding depression is to find new and constant ways to make meaning.

“To heal your depression, you must force life to mean. You force life to mean by sitting down and deciding what you want your life to mean. When you are satisfied with your answer, and if you have been truthful with yourself, you will have stripped away false meanings and motives and arrived at your best understanding of how you intend to shape your life. By providing yourself with personal reasons for taking your own life seriously, you begin to build a shield against meaninglessness. These reasons must be personal. The hunt for ultimate reasons will prove a waste of time, even for believers, since we are built to dispute anything, putative pronouncements from gods. No ultimate reason takes precedence over a righteous human reason for taking action and making meaning.”

In my job, I often work and talk with people in recovery, and found Maisel’s take on addiction interesting as well. He writes about it as “happy bondages.”

“When you abandon your meaning-making activities for whatever reason–because it is too hard to make meaning, because you don’t know what meaning to make, because you’ve made some meaning and want respite from meaning-making–you court an addiction. Agitated, bored, you throw up your hands and cry, ‘Give me sex, give me a high, give me something!’ …Once having taken root, an addiction reduces your freedom to make personal meaning while increasing your psychological and physical dependence on the thing craved. The addiction begins to take care of meaning crises in its own way, producing an oddly satisfactory state of affairs: a happy bondage. The great irony about addiction is that, despit its terrible consequences, despite the guilt and despair that come from being out of control and from knowing you are out of control, the addiction is still less of a problem than freedom.”

Compelling stuff. I recommend this book for writers and other artists who struggle with depression or even severe lack of motivation or writer’s block. Eric Maisel, PhD, is a psychotherapist, as well as pioneer of creativity coaching in the San Francisco area. He has a Web site at ericmaisel.com.