Yay! I Finished Another Book - Even This I Get To Experience By Norman Lear

Or did I?   Finish another book, I mean.  Oh, I attempted to.  But I must say that I skimmed the last 150 pages or so of famed TV producer Norman Lear's memoirs.  It's hard to fathom how someone as groundbreaking and prolific and clever as Norman Lear can be, in the written word, so damn dull.

When I heard that Lear was publishing his autobiography, I knew I would be a buyer.  I mean, the man created some of the most memorable TV shows, including "All in the Family."  This was eagerly awaited.

And I began to read it and something felt wrong.  True, Lear is one of those memoir writers who scurried from event to event.  

"Then, I..."

"Then, I..."

"Then, we..."

The only trouble is that the only one who finds this particularly interesting is, well, Norman Lear.  For the first 150 or so pages, we are treated to every detail of his childhood and early life.  It's an cascade of information that is very dull.  

In the middle third of the tome, Lear finally comes across with the goods.  We learn about the battle to get "All in the Family" on the air.  His weekly script fights with Carroll O'Connor.  We hear about the fights with actors Esther Rolle and John Amos over their desires to ensure that "Good Times" was totally representative of the Black family in America.  Then there are the skirmishes with the CBS network over a "Maude" episode where the title character chooses to have an abortion.

Lear seems to love to death his creation of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman."  In that chapter, I learn to my surprise that his first choice of writers for that weird late-night soap opera was the "I Love Lucy" team of Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh Davis.  Wow.  That's not a tidbit they had shared with me.  But what a mismatch that would be.  They would not be good fits for a "comedy satire" that features a family mass murder down the block.

And, as compelling as this section is, there's an underlying attitude from the writer.   In all these battles, Norman Lear is never wrong.  There is zero humility in this man.   And, as a result, his book becomes exhausting.

During the last third of the book, which completely lost me, Lear gets into all the liberal causes he backs.  He's certainly entitled to his opinion.  But I certainly don't care.   And I doubt anybody else does either.  Hence, the aforementioned skimming of the last 150 pages.  

At the end of this ultimate waste of time, I learned a lot about Norman Lear.   But I don't think it's what the author had in mind.   

Yawn.

Dinner last night:  Asian chopped salad.