Tag: memoirs

Review: A Primate’s Memoir

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Earlier I reviewed Why Don’t Zebra’s Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky as a part of my mental health month and I already have Behave sitting in my pile; Robert Sapolsky, either through listened to lectures or his books, has been a subject I’ve no doubt my friends are getting tired of hearing about.


A Primate’s Memoir, however, is not the same breed of popular science book as Sapolsky’s other work, but rather a straightforward memoir about his experiences as a field researcher in Africa.


Sapolsky details his twenty-plus years living with a troop of baboons, their culture, and the conflicts in the scientific community of speaking about animal culture in human terms. He also details cultural shocks living among and interacting with different tribes and in different African countries and often his own fumbling unpreparedness as he adapts (including a notable horrifying first experience with tamarind).


The memoir includes harrowing stories of being taken captive, having guns held to his head, being mistaken for a mercenary, and in general the sort of adventures that come to a certain breed of guy™ with an irreverence and compelling story telling style.


He’s the sort of unassuming person that the vanilla masses probably believe just sits in a lab and wouldn’t expect to have spent a time traveling with a caravan of Somalis plundering locals, and yet.


The book is a compelling, engaging, very intelligently and thoughtfully written account. Sapolsky brings an honesty and no-bullshit narrative voice to his time in Africa while offering the perspective that he is just one researcher who has dealt with corruption, with cultural shocks, with various international blocks and that there is so much more to field research and medicine than most people realize.

On John Waters

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In the past year I grew really fond of reading different memoirs. It’s a daunting and heavy task, filing through lives quickly in a 300 page format. It can make life feel small, condensed to retellings of old thoughts and anecdotes. But it can also make life feel rich, remind you that each person has their own vastness. It’s the bigness and smallness of being alive.

So, this is my way of warning you that there’s going to be a lot of memoirs and biographies this year. I’ve already selected out a lot of memoirs this month to read.

When you’re grinding through the wood pulp of memoirs it gets to be hard to judge them. Do I like it for being funny, inspirational, moving, all of the above. Is there a rating system that’s going to judge one life against another? So I think I’m going to stick to talking about ones that made me think.

And that generally requires some misdirection.

So for my first foray, I’m going to talk about John Waters.

That John Waters short story I put out last year is true, I did meet him as a little kid. You can read about it here: https://aliactast.com/2022/06/11/excerpt-from-mazes/

Years ago I read an introduction Waters wrote to a book on Tennessee Williams, about how John Waters hadn’t met Tennessee Williams and was glad for it. I agree. I hope I don’t meet John Waters again. It would ruin the anecdote.

I read, recently, both Role Models and Mr Know It All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filthy Elder

I liked them both, I’m going to talk about them together.

Role Models, in particular, stuck with me. Especially the chapters on pornographers and convicts. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked in rehabilitation, but one of the things which struck me and which I think people would take for granted or overlook about John Waters is his fervent belief in rehabilitation. He’s a funny man, he’s a queer icon, he coaxed or otherwise suggested that Divine eat dog shit and declare murder legal, but at his heart he is a man who has a lot of faith in people.

That takes guts. Role Models is set up such that John interviewed various people who had inspired him, one way or another, over the years. He wanted to see how they live, how they get along now as opposed to when the world may have known them, and he wanted to give thanks for whatever part they played in his life.

There are people portrayed in the book who certainly would never have gotten a spotlight anywhere else in any other way. And that, sort of, is how I feel about memoirs. These brief glimpses into whole lives, this reminder that everyone is just out there, trucking along however they can.

John did a solid job, I think inexpertly with nothing to offer from myself about it. He did something that plants the seed of these people in other heads. That’s beautiful. Even if not everyone agrees that they should be there. You don’t get to cast judgement and John doesn’t. His brand is being nonjudgmental, whether you view it that way or not.

The second book was Mr. Know It All, a more traditional memoir filled with bits and stories and life progression. But, in some ways, it lacked the heart of Role Models. Reading them both, I think Role Models tells you more about John than the book about John.

He does devote a lot of time to talking about dying and aging and as interesting as the anecdotes about movie sets and his life are, I’m morbid and I love the grit. He goes into detail on trying acid again in his old age which sounded delightful, but also that he and so many of his friends have bought funeral plots near one another so that the party can keep going. I love that.

My thing with John Waters, the reason I like the old man so much, apart from the fact I’m some weird alt indie gonzo monster, is that so many people, especially people with some success or notoriety, look at it and say, ‘I’m amazing, I’m an auteur, you couldn’t possibly understand me, I’m on the edge of creativity’ etc etc.

There are so many people who look at their success as a success of their personal vision. John doesn’t give that impression. John seems to look at whatever success he has had and instead of lifting himself up, he says, ‘if I’m successful, there must be more people like me out there than I’d thought.’ And then everyone is less alone.