Everything to Excess

One of my favorite recently published books is Mr. Know It All by A. J. Jacobs which I came upon displayed on a table in a small bookstore in Portland, Oregon.  What I great book to keep your nose in flying home across the country, quietly giggling so as not to have the steward engage any TSA agents on the plane.  AJ’s premise in that book was to complete an adventure that was abandoned by his father:  to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover.  Because AJ didn’t know what facts and characters he would stumble across in this effort, it was all rather innocently joyous:  his conclusion that to be assured of being mentioned as famous in the EB one had to either be a king’s mistress or invent a new type font; his citing of a misnomer, that is should be Daffy Drake; and his interviewing of the tomes themselves with taking the Mensa test and trying out for Jeopardy as surrogate measures about whether he was learning anything to improve his IQ.

In Drop Dead Healthy, AJ again dedicates a couple years to a single pursuit, this time trying to learn everything he can do to be the healthiest person on earth.  This time there is no logical alphabetic ordering approach, so he devotes a month to each organ in his body.  It doesn’t work as well as his first book:  sure he still has his trademark background of how his family reacts to his compulsions, his eye-rolling wife, his frail and ailing grandfather, and his eccentric aunt, but it ends up too gray.  He tracks down every ultra, maximum, intense approach to diet, exercise, mediation, et cetera, but each chapter ends with hallow partial endorsements.  It is risk-free, he does not chance recommending any action as beneficial.  

Soon, I was comparing it to the last medical quackery book I read from that guy that wants to read everyone’s protein chains.

How did I stray so far from my alphabetical 2012 listing of books I needed to read to make my literacy have fewer gaps?  I’ve concluded the problem is my reference to this year being a bucket list.  That conjures up thoughts to being at the tail end of one’s life and probably facing poorer health; ergo, these quasi-medical selections.  It also suggests one is approaching the ebbing golden years; hence, my need to read about my contemporaries, Carole King, Frank Langella, Greg Allman, to say to myself, well it least I led a better life, if less glamorous than theirs.  I must, I must, I must return to Tara.

Stations of the Cross

I finished the third of three autobiographies in the past month:  Carole King, Frank Langella and now Greg Allman.  I find myself asking this question:  “What am I looking for that can’t be found on Wiki?”

I mentioned in my Langella review that I preferred the writer sorting his or her life by impact rather than chronology.  Greg falls into the latter category.  If you follow ABB like I do, you know the origins and changes to band members.  Celebrity headlines, whether you avidly follow those kinds of magazines or not, have bombarded the public with tales of his marriages and substance abuse.  So what did I want to find in the book?

Personal insight.  Especially when the person writing about his life is at least 60, some reflection and self-assessment, if not wisdom, should come across:  why did I do these things, who got hurt in the process.  Greg’s last paragraph:  “I must have said this a million times, but if I died today, I have had me a blast.  I really mean that – if I fell over dead right not, I have led some kind of life.  I wouldn’t trade it for nobody’s, but I don’t know if I’d do it again.  If somebody offered me a second round, I think I’d have to pass on it.”  That tells me nothing.  Is it just post liver transplant that Greg doesn’t have the physical strength to party hardy.  No one could probably live the same life, but he has no inkling of how to avoid the crises without giving up the successes perforce.

Furthermore, I am left unsettled to how much of the book Greg actually wrote.  A couple of times, he protests about being smart, a "valedictorian" in either grammar or junior high school. (huh?).  His co-author is a man named Alan Light who wrote for Vibe and Spin and is an Ivy League grad.  Which way does the scale tip for you?

Greg plays with one of his song titles for the book, naming it My Cross to Bear, whereas the song is It’s Just Not My Cross to Bear.  His sins are heavy, pride being the greatest unacknowledged one.