Sage Fire Reviews

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

A Burlesque Childhood

Alan Alda honed his acting and writing skills from the time he was born.  Simply normal everyday life for him but the rest of the world was somewhat crazy.  What better autobiography than a poignant view of his own life through the filters of success, failures, and self realization?

Synopsis: 

Learn how to shoot craps while sandwiched between two naked ladies?  Its only Burlesque!  Practice delivering lines with your dad until you can do them better in your sleep than he can in his? Its only Burlesque! Your mom tries to stab your dad when he comes home? Well maybe she needs help and maybe its just Burlesque!

Alan Alda grew up being the only thing he could be, an actor.  Everything in his life revolved around being an actor, and it took him a long time to discover, actors are not quite human.

It took him a great deal longer to figure out the reason they are not quite human is because they are too much exactly human.  Great actors don't pretend to be someone else, they become someone else.

The hunt throughout his life for the qualities his dad and his dad's friends exuded with every stage appearance, is the dream stuff which reality for him was made from.  This is the story of that hunt, great and small, through that fateful day when he walked on the stage for a new TV program and he simply became Hawkeye Pierce.  And a long bit more of the revelations which came afterward.

Impression: 

Make no qualms about it, this has to be the second or third most reviewed book in the world.  In and of itself, this fact alone decries the reverence and popularity Alan Alda brought to acting, television, and writing.  Long before Nike decried the motto of "just do it" Alan Alda lived it.

Many people look to Alan Alda and have wondered aloud how does he stay so humble? For ages some have thought it to be an act in and of itself.  Here in this book, he lays to rest such inane questioning, because he never ever considered himself to be famous. 

He either made enough money to support his family or he didn't. He had fun doing the part, or he didn't. He never sought norteriety, and when you see him even yet, it is reflected in all he does.

The brillance of the personality and the man comes through with humor and verve. He has found a means to relate his own personal journey to that of the everyday common man.  Discover an uncommon life, told with effulgency, and revel your mind in this book.

RATING:  10 Campfires

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Targeted readership:

All Readers over the age of 17.

1 Flames for mild sexual inuendo content.

Author's credentials:

Reviewer & reviewer credentials:

MD Johnson is a mountain northwest regional -- freelance author, living in Payette, Idaho.

His writing interests include poetry, romance, westerns, science fiction, travel, and history. His work has appeared in a diverse range of publications including True Romance and Ballyhoo Stories.

In 2007 he bacme an EPIC author and he has republished the 1935 western classic historical novel, “The Bitterroot Trail” as the anthologist. http://thebitterroottrail.pencraft.biz 

Mr. Johnson also runs a book review web site, Sage Fire Reviews, http://sagefire.pencraft.biz . Mr Johnson specializes in small press editions which include multi-format e-books in the genres above. In early 2008, Mr. Johnson was nominated and accepted membership into the National Book Critics Circle.

If you have a book or an ARC, you would like Mr. Johnson to review, please address your questions to him at queries@pencraft.biz.

All work © 2008, MD Johnson, all rights reserved.