Autobiography – Page 15 – education and deconstruction.com

Frank & Charli

The Book of the Week is “Frank & Charli” by Frank Yandolino, published in 2016. This is the (imperfectly edited) double biography of a married couple, or rather a name-dropping bragfest recounted mostly by the husband (Frank), who was a project manager for artistic and musical celebrities from the 1960’s to date.

Frank believed the secret to his success has been his opportunism, ability to be innovative, be himself and trusted by his clients. His wife Charli, the love of his life, served as his loyal and competent assistant during most of his endeavors, some of which were failures.

Frank thought that “Woodstock” was a major event in American cultural history. “The Woodstock Nation was supposed to be the birth of a new generation, a generation of Green Peace (sic), Save the Whales, and No More War.” Sadly, a few attempts were made to re-enact the event on anniversaries, but two of its major organizers had a falling out after the original, and were not on speaking terms.

Frank feels that unhappiness stems from phoniness– “Facebook is a place that narcissists use to post how they want to be seen.” Read the book to learn how Frank and Charli stayed happy together through the decades.

David Spade is Almost Interesting

The Book of the Week is “David Spade is Almost Interesting, the Memoir” by David Spade, published in 2015. This ebook is about the life of the actor and stand-up comedian.

Born in the mid-1960’s, Spade is the youngest of three brothers. His father abandoned the family when he was little.

The comedian wrote about how he started his career in stand-up comedy, and achieved sufficient success to become a writer on the TV show “Saturday Night Live” for a few seasons in the early 1990’s. The show’s content-generators and performers were fiercely competitive because extra money and a big ego boost went to the writers who got a sketch on the air, or did more acting than others. When Spade’s sketches were rejected, his fellow cast members were “… quietly doing mental cartwheels because of the schadenfreude festival around the seventeenth floor [of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan].” He summed up his situation thusly: “I had such a massive chip on my shoulder about being an underdog from Arizona with no show business connections.”

According to Spade, the movie and television studios encourage actors to use social media to interact with their fans. He revealed that the studios might cast an actor for a certain role based on the number of followers he has on Twitter or Instagram.

In addition to describing the making of movies with fellow comedian Chris Farley, the author also included a chapter on his love life. He apparently believes all the male and female stereotypes and that is perhaps why is still a bachelor, as of this writing.

Read the book to learn of Spade’s antics and traumas.

The Zanzibar Chest

The Book of the Week is “The Zanzibar Chest” by Aidan Hartley, published in 2003. This is the autobiography of a foreign correspondent (journalist) in Africa. The diary of a late, close, adventurous friend of his father’s was found in a Zanzibar Chest. The author sought to interview all the people mentioned in it.

The author’s father was a British civil servant who helped colonize various African countries, and then supervise cotton growing with their independence movements and agricultural reforms. The light-skinned men destroyed the culture and economy of the dark-skinned men. The latter lost their livestock and crops, and began to starve. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, American Baptist missionaries aggressively pressured the natives to convert to Christianity in exchange for Western food and clothes.

Born in 1965 in Kenya, Hartley had two older brothers and an older sister. They were sent to boarding school in England. He started his career with the Financial Times in Tanzania in the mid 1980’s. After he got his sea legs– having learned to doctor his expense reports and stories– he became a “Darwin Award” candidate, covering wars in Ethiopia, Somalia, the Balkans and Rwanda. In that first country’s civil war in 1991, the rebels were supplied with arms by the Americans, Soviets, Chinese, North Koreans and the Israelis.

Hartley was also a freelance journalist, or “stringer”– “… he had flown four thousand miles without an assignment, immersed himself in a story about which he knew nothing, and would struggle until he improved his camerawork and got a good story.” For a while, he was with Reuters. However, it is expensive for a news service or newspaper publisher to pay for housing, armed guards and vehicles for a group of full-time reporters in a country full of desert and violence, such as Somalia. Other countries offer better business opportunities because they have a better climate and are resource-rich, in addition to being prone to violence, like South Africa.

Read the book to learn of Hartley’s adventures and how the nature of reporting of war and famine from Africa has changed through the decades.

Foxcatcher

The Book of the Week is “Foxcatcher” by Mark Schultz with David Thomas, published in 2014. This autobiography discusses the author’s experiences in high school, college and professional wrestling in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, and his association with John du Pont.

Wrestling is comprised of technique, conditioning and luck. The season runs from November through March, and fans can be loud, obnoxious and profane. Schultz and his older brother, Dave, were passionate wrestlers. In 1983, they competed in the World Championships in Kiev, Russia. In 1984, they were the first brothers in United States wrestling history to win Olympic gold medals. During a time in his career when he struggled to make a living, Schultz put on wrestling clinics. He was employable in this capacity because he had been a global wrestling celebrity, hired by high school wrestling coaches. Wrestling is a nonrevenue sport. On the other hand, Russian wrestlers are paid to train and compete on the Olympic team.

John du Pont was an eccentric, super-rich donor to Villanova University who decided to start a wrestling program there in the mid 1980’s. Schultz assisted with that effort. John du Pont broke the NCAA rules in various ways because he could, just to be controlling. He produced awards ceremonies for himself. “John got a kick out of manipulating people to see if they would go against their principles in exchange for money.”

Read the book to learn the details of Schultz’s wrestling life, and du Pont’s actions in connection therewith.

Man of the World

The Book of the Week is “Man of the World” by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., published in 1959. This autobiography discussed the life of a member of one of Newport, Virginia’s prominent, wealthier families.

Vanderbilt had a childhood typical for economic royalists of his generation– he was raised by governesses, lived in an opulent Fifth Avenue mansion (in New York), and in Europe during certain months of the year. His father, an engineer, had an army career. For his fifteenth birthday, Vanderbilt received a 29-foot sailboat which he took around New England.

Since he was in Germany and England so much, Vanderbilt learned about the coming of the Great War (WW I) before most Americans did. After doing his war service, having been exposed to poison gas in Ypres, he wasn’t quite the same youngster “… who had rushed off to save bleeding Belgium and make the world safe for democracy.”

Against his parents’ wishes, Vanderbilt entered the field of journalism, reporting for the New York Times on California labor troubles in the early 1920’s. Back then, there were more Japanese farmers than white farmers. Heirs of super-rich families in the mid 1920’s felt a sense of entitlement about their inheritance, but also filial piety– most obeyed their parents in making major life choices, such as careers. Vanderbilt’s father thought “A newspaperman was a low creature dedicated to invasion of privacy, digging away at scandals like a dirty dog.” The buyers of most newspapers at that time were the unwashed masses, and therefore unworthy of his father’s esteem.

After encountering financial problems running his own newspapers, and family inheritance problems, Vanderbilt appealed to his celebrity friends in Hollywood for cash. “I took the actual bills to the bank in a taxi and dumped them on the desk of the vice president.”

The author interviewed Hitler a few times in the 1930’s, and in 1936, with a crew, shot film footage secretly in Germany. The film was shown at the Mayfair Theatre in New York. Hundreds of residents of Manhattan’s Yorkville section (German at the time), protested, necessitating police reserves to keep the peace. “These were the years during which … swastikas were scrawled on subway walls in the East Eighties.”

Vanderbilt claimed that when he visited with Hitler, he conveyed personal messages from President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), asking Hitler to stay peaceful. Yes, dear reader, Vanderbilt almost saved the world. According to Vanderbilt, FDR was supposed to have a meeting in 1939 (that never took place) with Hitler, Stalin and Churchill that might have avoided the war altogether.

Businessmen were at once anti-war and anti-FDR. The president proposed imposing a trade embargo on Germany. However, this would provoke hostility from the German people, as their standard of living would fall even further. Wealthy businessmen had no idea of the deprivations the Germans had suffered.

Vanderbilt was a foreign correspondent for Liberty Magazine, and an international spy for FDR. He was supplied with a short-wave radio set and a Zenith TV engraved, “Made expressly for and stolen from Neil Vanderbilt.” In August 1939, in Poland, he found Heinrich Himmler in his hotel room when he returned one evening. Nevertheless, he refrained from using his gas gun– a pen-shaped weapon containing a gas cylinder.

After the war, FDR’s son Jimmy Roosevelt ran for California governor. “He spoke sensibly on world affairs and important state issues, but lacked the funds to pay for the sort of publicity the other side was given for free.” Sadly, advertising agencies and their clients prompted censoring of free and open discourse of editors and publishers on TV, in newspapers and magazines. As usual, people were controlled by money. The author observed that this was more commonly the case in America than in Europe.

Amusing Side Note: The author’s father had enemies, so during distasteful episodes prior to his death, his father hired different attorneys through the years to update his will and add codicils.

Read the book for additional intrigue (“Although a shipload of Jewish refugees might seem an unlikely place to look for Nazis, actually it was a fine place for them to hide.”), and once again, see that there is nothing new under the sun.

Jawaharlal Nehru

The Book of the Week is “Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography” originally published in 1936. This book on Indian history shows the reader yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun.

Born in 1889, Nehru, who had much older sisters, grew up in a wealthy, multigenerational Hindu family of Kashmiri origin. After completing his elitist legal education, following in the footsteps of his father, he became an Indian civil servant and political activist in Bombay. He wrote, “All the bureaucrats in New Delhi do are gossip about promotions, leave and rules, furloughs, transfers and scandal.”

In the mid-nineteen teens, the Indian populace began agitating for Home Rule (also called “swaraj”)– breaking the yoke of British colonialism, and making peace among believers of Hinduism and Islam– two major Indian religions (amid violence in the Punjab in 1919, and other areas such as Bengal). In a nutshell, “India is supposed to be a religious country above everything else, and Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and others take pride in their faiths and testify to their truth by breaking heads.”

Nehru’s father became a follower of Gandhi, who led the powerful, non-violent movement of civil disobedience, satyagraha. In the early 1920’s, a few million people participated in non-cooperation protests at Gandhi’s behest. Many, including Nehru were jailed with sentences of one to three years, sometimes with early releases, on and off into the mid-1930’s. Their civil rights of assembly, speech, etc. were severely curtailed, as was their ability to defend themselves in “show-trials” against the British authorities’ hastily conceived, arbitrary legislation outlawing the dissident political groups and their activities. [Side Note: Authorities in South Africa (a former British colony) behaved the same way as the British authorities fifty (!) years later, against dark-skinned political dissidents under apartheid.]

Nehru recounted an ugly episode involving his mother. She was peacefully marching in a protest when police arrested her and bloodied her head, beating her with their batons. “That night a false rumour spread in Allahabad that my mother had died. Angry crowds gathered together, forgot about peace and non-violence, and attacked the police.”

As well, the spirit of the times involved youth groups and workers’ trade unions, who met to talk late into the night about the social and economic problems of the day. Socialism and Marxism were in the air. Nehru and other political dissidents urged peasant farmers to initiate a rent strike against their landlords. Gandhi launched a few attention-mongering hunger strikes in his attempts to effect political change.

During 1930, there were negotiations for Indian independence. A new Constitution would have to be drafted with provisions on national defense, foreign affairs, financial and economic policy, and on what was to be done about India’s indebtedness to Britain.

Funny, in the mid-1930’s, Nehru could have been writing about current American politics: “It is very unfortunate that foolish and ill-informed criticisms of a personal nature are made, because they divert attention from the real issues.” Across the Atlantic, there was a “…Europe in turmoil, fearful of war and tumult and with economic crises always on the horizon.” At that time, India’s people were not alone in their suffering. There was more violence and death around the world due to fascism, nazism, imperialism and colonialism than now. Nevertheless, Nehru asked a question that is still relevant, “Were there any principles, and standards of conduct in this world, or was it all sheer opportunism?”

Read the book to learn Nehru’s answer, and about Indian history in the 1920’s and ’30’s, as seen through Nehru’s eyes.

Psychedelic Bubble Gum

The Book of the Week is “Psychedelic Bubble Gum” by Bobby Hart, published in 2015. This is the autobiography of a singer/songwriter.

Hart started his career in 1958, at eighteen years old. He was signed to a management/recording artist contract, but he had to “pay to play.” It cost him $400– a lot of money in those days– for the privilege of recording, with other musicians, “A” and “B” sides of two 45-rpm records. His producer did hire top-notch talent, however.

In the early 1960’s, every weekend, Hart played music at high school auditoriums around southern California with already-famous groups such as Jan and Dean, the Righteous Brothers, the Coasters and the Beach Boys. He wasn’t paid for it, but he had to do it in exchange for the promotion of his records in Los Angeles.

This blogger was a bit perturbed by the author’s factually erroneous line, “… in the upscale New York City suburb of Riverdale.” The author’s producer’s Manhattan office contained numerous cubicles occupied by singer-songwriters, including Hart and his songwriting partner, Tommy Boyce. They cooperated well and weren’t credit-grabbers. In 1964, he and Boyce wrote a song for Jay Black & the Americans. He got 1/3 of a cent per record sold, because his two co-writers got royalties, too.

Read the book to learn how he came to co-write songs for The Monkees (who sold more records than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined) and The Partridge family, what transpired when he and his partner hired an aggressive manager, and how he built a successful recording and performing career.

A Backpack, A Bear, Eight Crates of Vodka

The Book of the Week is “A Backpack, A Bear, Eight Crates of Vodka” by Lev Golinkin, published in 2014. This is the autobiography of a Soviet immigrant from a Jewish family fleeing oppression in Kharkov, in the U.S.S.R. in late 1989, when he was eight. They ultimately ended up in the United States, thanks to the assistance of the nonfprofit organization HIAS and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Two atypical aspects of his family’s situation, were that they were kept at the refugee-hotel near Vienna, Austria for six months rather than a few weeks, and were placed in American Midwestern suburbia, in a college town, instead of in an urban area with other Jewish families who spoke Russian.

There were stark cultural differences between what they left behind, and their new world. You can take the people out of Russia, but you can’t take the Russia out of the people. A simple fund-raising call from the local Police Benefit Fund in America evoked panic in Golinkin’s father, because in Russia, all government authorities were to be feared as those who could ruin one’s life arbitrarily. The Soviets so persecuted Jewish families by singling them out for their religion that when the immigrants settled in the United States, they opted to exercise their freedom NOT to practice their religion. The author’s much older sister was warned she was going to be rejected from medical school for no other reason than that her family was Jewish. So she, like her father, was forced to study engineering instead. In sum, their outlook on life was extremely pessimistic, having been beaten down in their native country from the cradle.

In the United States, the quality of life of Golinkin’s family significantly improved. But they had to learn English and how to navigate American financial matters. And his parents had to take low-level jobs, when previously, they had been an engineer and a doctor. They were adamant that their son would be a failure in life if he did not become a doctor.

Read the book to learn how the author’s family adjusted to their new identity as Americans.

What’s So Funny

The Book of the Week is “What’s So Funny?” by Tim Conway with Jane Scovell, published in 2013. This is the comedian’s autobiography. An only child born in December 1933 to an Irish father and Romanian mother, he grew up in a suburb of Cleveland. The former groomed horses and the latter made slipcovers for sofas at a time they were becoming popular in American living rooms. Conway is best known for acting on the Carol Burnett Show.

Conway started gaining experience in an entertainment career in his mid-20’s, at a Cleveland radio station. When he had “made it” on TV, he performed material he had written himself. In the early 1960’s, Steve Allen, the late-night talk-show host, told Conway to change his first name from Tom to Tim, because there was another performer named Tom Conway, so he did.

Read the book to learn of the antics Conway used to break into show business in his generation, and of the characters who populated his life.

Home

The Book of the Week is “Home” by Julie Andrews, published in 2008. This memoir tells of Andrews’ life until just after she turned 27 years old.

The author found her talent and passion as a singer with her parents when she was ten. They traveled around England performing, and even got to sing for the royal family. It was not all fun and games, however, as her parents split, and found new lovers. Her stepfather and mother devolved into alcoholism. As a teenager, she was under pressure to financially support them, plus care for her younger half-siblings. Her education fell by the wayside as a consequence.

Read the book to learn the series of events that led to Andrews’ starring in various hit shows through the decades, and about her experiences in show business.