{"id":1730,"date":"2013-06-23T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T00:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2013-06-23T16:02:43","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T00:02:43","slug":"review-life-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1730","title":{"rendered":"Review: Life Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel confident that Roger Ebert titled his memoir Life Itself<\/em> partially so there would be a bunch of reviews titled like this one.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of ways to look at Life Itself<\/em>, but I think I’ll take Ebert’s own tack in assessing it: how did it affect me when I read it? I came away feeling that I’d spent time talking with someone who was colorful and interesting.\u00a0 The book convinced me that I would like the opportunity to meet Roger and get to know him better.\u00a0 He seems honest, interesting, and intelligent.<\/p>\n

Honesty is necessary for a great memoir.\u00a0 A writer who spends a couple hundred\u00a0 pages making press releases or excuses may as well just write fiction.\u00a0 Ebert doesn’t do this, nor does he write whatever he thinks at the moment.\u00a0 The book is full of genuine sentiments, arrived at after a lifetime of consideration, and expressed with verve and polish.\u00a0 That can rob them of some immediacy – his discussion of his personal theology is intentionally measured rather than ecstatic – but overall seems consistent with the man’s character.\u00a0 I also think an examined, joyful, life clearly and honestly expressed is the best we can hope for.<\/p>\n

It also helps to have an interesting life to talk about.\u00a0 Intellectually, I agree with Scott McCloud that everyone has a story to tell, but in my heart I believe that some people’s lives are just more interesting than others.\u00a0 Ebert’s clearly done a lot; pulitzer prize winning journalist, television star, leader in the film community, and cancer survivor.\u00a0 In addition to living a full life himself, he’s interviewed a lot of other standouts.\u00a0 Life Itself tours all this interesting space.<\/p>\n

Finally, he thinks about things well.\u00a0 Some intellectuals come off as cold because their drive to analyze the world drains their intensity.\u00a0 Ebert tells you what he thinks without ignoring how he feels.\u00a0 Few people can think well and maintain both intensity and civility while they explain it.\u00a0 Ebert is one of them.<\/p>\n

If one wanted to be critical of Life Itself<\/em>, one could point out that it is episodic and lacks overarching structure.\u00a0 And this is so; it has clearly coalesced from blog posts, rather than being a literary undertaking.\u00a0 But, so what?\u00a0 It’s a well-written distillation of a man’s beliefs and the path that lead him to those beliefs.\u00a0 That’s a pretty good definition of a memoir.<\/p>\n

Strongly Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel confident that Roger Ebert titled his memoir Life Itself partially so there would be a bunch of reviews titled like this one. There are a lot of ways to look at Life Itself, but I think I’ll take Ebert’s own tack in assessing it: how did it affect me when I read it? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1735,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/1735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}