Autobio – Originally From America – Page 16 – education and deconstruction.com

Johnny’s Girl

The Book of the Week is “Johnny’s Girl: A Daughter’s Memoir of Growing Up in Alaska’s Underworld” by Kim Rich, published in 1993. In this book, Ms. Rich described her unusual childhood in Alaska, a place to which organized crime figures such as her father fled, to hide from the authorities. Her mother, an ex-stripper, was in and out of mental hospitals. Ms. Rich came of age in the 1960’s, about which she had this to say:

“Life was a trip… The one sure way to fail was not to take the trip… out of the middle class, away from the lives your parents had led… The idea was, you would end up a happy, fully realized human being only if you took some risks. Taking a risk could mean joining the Peace Corps or hitchhiking across Europe, dropping acid or dating a black guy, becoming a vegetarian or chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ or quitting a job to go to New Hampshire to campaign for Gene McCarthy.”

Read the book to find out what kind of trip Ms. Rich took.

A Gift of Laughter

The Book of the Week is “A Gift of Laughter” by Allan Sherman published in 1965. This is the autobiography of song parodist and co-creator of the TV show “I’ve Got a Secret.”

Sherman became most famous for the song, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” which describes the humorous adventures of a kid in summer camp. President John F. Kennedy was heard to be humming his song, “Sarah Jackman” while walking through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Some of Sherman’s other songs, such as “J.C. Cohen,” “Al ‘N’ Yetta” and “Harvey and Sheila” also captured Jewish stereotypes, but had American appeal.

In the book, Sherman provided bits of trivia on Hollywood of the 1950’s and 1960’s. When he had finally become rich and famous, he bought a house next door to Harpo Marx, with a rubber tree in the yard. When he was interviewing candidates to hire a secretary, he came across one who deliberately failed a typing test. She admitted to him she was a member of an “Unemployment Club.”

The goal was to stay jobless for the maximum membership duration, six months, at which time her unemployment benefits ran out, anyway. She was receiving $55 a week, which was pooled with benefits of eleven other people, who were renting a sprawling ranch house in the Hollywood Hills (that had a swimming pool), and a convertible car. Members engaged in sunbathing and skinny dipping, and practiced free love.

Sadly, Sherman died at 49 years old of heart disease, possibly due to his admittedly poor diet of Kraft macaroni and “cheese” dinners. He was survived by his college-sweetheart wife, a son and a daughter.

Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference

The Book of the Week is “Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference” by Mark Edmundson, published in 2002. The author wrote this book as a tribute to his high school philosophy teacher. One of many memorable questions the teacher asked during the school year was, “Why do we need leaders?” Answer: We need someone to think for us. Many of us human beings are lazy and we do not want to think for ourselves. The author described how even the class clown was made to think, and learned something in this teacher’s class.

Leading With My Chin

The Book of the Week is “Leading With My Chin,” the autobiography of Jay Leno. This is an amusing book, although the part in which he explains the secret to his success, is rather simple. It was tenacity: “…we would start lining up outside the clubs at two in the afternoon with hopes of getting onstage sometime after eleven that night… I’ve never been better at anything than anybody else… I plowed forward, slow and steady. Even if it meant sitting on curbs all day or sleeping on the back steps of comedy clubs all night.”