Yay! I Finished Another Book - "The Garner Files"

Lots of recent plane trips means lots of reading for Len.  And I'm starting to finish some books.

It helps that I've been concentrating on Hollywood biographies like the recent Sal Mineo book report I provided.  These tomes can usually be knocked off in a single LAX-JFK trip.  Fast reads with plenty of juicy gossip that enables you to breeze through the pages with a big old smile on your face.

Not so the new memoir co-written by James Garner.  This has to be one of the slowest fast reads I've encountered.  You zip along for a bit and then, suddenly without prior warning, you hit forty pages of a brick wall.  Dull, boring, and uninteresting tales essayed by somebody who is essentially dull, boring, and uninteresting.

Maybe I should have thought about this before I even bought the book.

Okay, let's face it, when you think of James Garner, you don't immediately conjure up images of a great actor with tons of epic works to his credit.  Essentially, he's a B-list actor who meandered his way through two hit TV shows and a bunch of marginal films.  However, he did appear in two of my all time favorite movies, namely "The Great Escape" and "Victor/Victoria."  I was inspired just a little to see what Garner had to say.

And, almost three hundred pages later, I discovered that he had precious little to say.

What did I expect?

Oh, it's all amiable enough.  And predictably predictable.  This Hollywood memoirs all come off the same way.

"When I was 12, I ....."

"When I was 22, I....."

"When I met Julie Andrews, I...."

But, where James Garner goes all wrong is when he gets onto his pet topics.  That's when the forward progress is thrown for a thirty yard loss.

Politics, for instance.  Garner devotes a whole chapter to his views, which are as far left as you can get.  That's okay.  He is entitled to his opinions, although his pronouncement of Barack Obama as the second most intelligent statesman ever is clearly suspect.  Okay, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Winston Churchill.  That's already three that rank ahead of him.  Done.

But, on the political front, Jimbo also is pretty intolerant of anybody who disagrees with him and he's not shy about it.  In fact, he was friends with Charlton Heston until Moses himself moved toward conservatism.  Garner is almost gleeful as he describes how he kicked his former buddy to the curb.

Once I revived myself from that chapter, Garner didn't let me linger in a conscious state for long.  Nope, he moved onto a 20-page dissertation of auto racing.  On and on and on about Formula 1 this and Formula 1 that.  My eyelids fluttered at an even faster speed.

But, wait.  You want to really sleep?  There's more.

Garner then gives you twenty pages on his golf game.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzz.

Meanwhile, if Jim isn't doing his level best at sinking you deeper into a narcoleptic state, he's busy telling you about all his law suits over the years.  He always seems to be litigating against somebody who didn't pay him enough.  Admittedly, he probably was shafted over the years by those devilish crooks running Warner Brothers.  But, after all, you want to hear it about as much as you want to listen to Aunt Bertha talk about her gall bladder operation.

When he sticks to yakking it up about show biz, Garner is slightly more interesting, but not by much.  His "aw shucks, I'm just a normal guy from Oklahoma" demeanor wears thin after the first 100 pages.  He's so strapped to put anything even remotely compelling in this book that he completely cedes the last chapter to his friends, who deliver their own stories about Garner.  Gee, I'm done talking about me.  But, maybe I'll let my friends tell you what they think...about me.

By the end of this book, I wanted to open the window next to me and toss it.  But, I was reminded that I was 34,000 feet in the air.  Why should I destroy the air pressure of this plane just because James Garner can't tell an interesting story?

When I have read these quick reading memoirs in the past, I sometimes come away wanting to actually meet the person.  Maybe get the chance to have a follow-up conversation that would embellish those stories that I really enjoyed.

If James Garner is seated at the table next to me in the Cheesecake Factory?

Ummm, I'll pass.

Dinner last night:  At the New York homestead, meat loaf, German potato salad and cole slaw.