Book Review: Life Itself: A Memoir, by Roger Ebert

Abstract

Life Itself: A Memoir. Roger Ebert. New York, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011. 415 pp. $30 hbk. $17 pbk. $9.99 ebk.Fittingly introduced by I was born into the movie of my life, the opening eight pages of Roger Ebert's Inside Life array bits of prose like snippets of acetate lying randomly on cutting-room floor, and serve as an inviting trailer to the 55 chapters (mini-chapters, really; only handful run more than 10 pages) his memoir contains. The 415 pages they comprise offer an intimate, honest prose selfie of life unbelievably rich in both rewards and tribulation.The term name-dropper never enters the reader's mind while encountering the book's far-too-many-to-count names of persons and places, many famous, others not. But should one wish to run tally, they are helpfully listed in 17-page index. Achievements and accomplishments, far beyond what most men can claim, are frankly presented. You'll find no false modesty in these pages. He points to himself as cocksure asshole as University of Illinois student, even being a little jerk as far back as in St. Mary's Grade School in hometown Champaign, Illinois, noting, That pattern has persisted. Ebert is his own severest critic in coping with years of alcoholism, and falling temptation to short-cuts in his fight with cancer. Possible evidence of excess ego in 16 pages of photographs is quickly dispelled by the unsparing closing images of the author after his years of surgeries.It is straightforward narrative. Those bits of prose detailing multiethnic background, largely German, Dutch and Irish, do not make for particularly entertaining reading. What you see is what you get.Paralleling the youth of more than few noteworthy journalists, Ebert first dipped into journalism at an early age, writing first for his grade-school and highschool newspapers, then stringing on local daily, where he won first-place Associated Press award for sports story. He even got an early teen's taste of broadcasting when hometown WKID radio disk jockey let him go on air reading the weather report.Ebert gives more space, though, to his years with his college paper, the Daily Illini, where he became editor in his senior year, in his words, tactless, egotistical, merciless and showboat. When the football team won trip to the Rose Bowl in 1963, Ebert assigned himself to cover it, making his first of what would become many trips to Hollywood.Hollywood and its denizens, of course, play large. There are mini-chapters on actors (Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne) and directors (Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Russ Meyer, Martin Scorsese). The film-festival centers of Boulder, Colorado, and Cannes in France, figure prominently.Then there's Chicago, home of both Ebert's Sun-Times and his print rival and broadcast partner Gene Siskel's Tribune, providing an abundance of colorful characters populating lively vignettes. …