So Anyway.... John Cleese.

So I'm going to try to make a better effort this year of writing about the books I read.  It's not particularly popular (average traffic for book reports is kind of low these days), but after four years here this blog needs a reason for existence, and I suppose I can think of nothing better than letters.  I'm sure there will still be plenty of random crazy make-em-ups, but for now I think this is where I want to be, etching my thoughts on what I have read permanently into the ether.  I hope I can at least do it in a way that is entertaining to....someone.

One bonus of this is that it will help me remember what I have read, and what I thought of it.  I have an incredibly ability to read through something and then instantly delete it from memory.

So Anyway....I mentioned the other day that my favorite Jon Stewart moment involved John Cleese.  Well, Mr. Cleese was there to hawk his book "So Anyway...." which is a memoir spanning the time from his birth through the very very start of Monty Python.

I enjoyed it, but I think that's mainly because I am a huge John Cleese fan so I'm going to enjoy anything he does.  That being said I am not sure it was really very good.  It was funny in parts (particularly when John remembers his childhood) and some of the digressions are truly interesting.

But the book drags a big when John goes to Cambridge and joins the Footlights, and it never really find the same energy.  John Cleese is a funny man; but reading about people trying to be funny just isn't....funny.

And I suppose it isn't supposed to be, and Cleese himself will be the first to tell you it is impossible to make something 100% funny - you just do the best you can.  But I think the other reason it drags is that there is no real sense of adversity.  The most marvelous thing about Cleese is that he sort of fell into show-business, he naturally found it and it kind of found him.  It's one of those outlier cases were a man with extraordinarily talent happens to be in the right place at the right time.  It's a wonderful story, but it maybe isn't the most interesting one.

What's more, it feels incomplete.  I found myself enjoying it simply because I am a John Cleese fan, but I desperately want to here more.  This almost feels like it should be first of a two or three volume set.  I'd like to hear Cleese talk about filming The Holy Grail or being on set with Life of Brian.  I'd like to hear about writing Fawlty Towers and sharing cricket scores with Baranard Bradley.  And sure....tell me why "A Fish Called Wanda" is so great, and maybe I will give it a second chance.

So a pretty good book, but it leaves one wanting more.  Cleese could write one of the great biographies if he chose to, but something tells me we are not going to get it.