The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 19 January 2006
by Alan Alda
Never having your dog stuffed seems like pretty obvious advice to this reader. But, people have enormously quirky methods they use to stave off the void of impending mortality. Alan Alda's family stuffed their dog, a cocker spaniel who met a gruesome death on their doorstep. The absurdity, tragic comedy, and bizarre symbolism of this story goes a long way toward setting the tone of Alda's trip down memory lane in this book. Alda is, of course, famous for his eleven year run on the television show M*A*S*H. But he is also a theater actor, writer, director and occasionally a clown at gas station openings. He is the son of burlesque stage performers, and his earliest memories have a childish eroticism, backstage with the strippers and chorus girls. He had a volatile relationship with his mother, who expressed various symptoms of mental illness. And he had a competitive relationship with his father, 40s and 50s leading man Robert Alda. All of this is retold in a memoir that is entertaining, light-hearted, and occasionally moving and insightful. Readers looking for a tell-all of the entertainment business, or behind-the-scenes stories on the set of M*A*S*H, might be disappointed. But readers looking for insight into the character of the man and the kind of struggling actor's life he has led will find themselves absorbed. The book is somewhat uneven in the attention Alda turns to various episodes in his life. He could have spent fewer pages telling us about filming a movie in a Utah prison and more on his mother and father. He could have told us more, too, of the effects a struggling actor's life has on his family. Still, we come away with a rough self-portrait of the man. In this book, after all, Alda has revealed much of who he is and what makes him tick, and he didn't have to do that, for any reader.