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Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper (2001)

by Art Pepper(Favorite Author)

4.31 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1841950645 (ISBN13: 9781841950648)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Canongate Books

review 1: this is the raw art -- the book is an (edited) transcription of tapes. so it's raw and the sentences aren't beautifully constructed but there's still a music to them as one would expect from art pepper.one doesn't have to know a thing about jazz to appreciate the life art lived. in his book he describes with clarity: drugs, prison, and cults. he tells things honestly, though one must be careful not to confuse this with "truth" -- there is some balance achieved through the insertion of interviews of people around him -- once you sort of understand art, you sort of understand better his point of view.
review 2: I came to this book via Terry Castle, author of "The Professor," a collection of feminist/critical essays, including a very amusing one about her relat... moreionship with Susan Sontag. Included in the book is a piece called "My Heroin Christmas," dealing with "Straight Life" by Art Pepper. Terry Castle loves this autobiography, an incredibly detailed chronicle about his magical, horrible, creative and heartbreaking time on this earth. She says part of her admiration comes partly from sheer fellow feeling for "Southern California white trash." As for myself, I look at the book the way I look at many books about life in the lower depths: it's thrilling to read about it, although I wouldn't want to experience it. Why is it thrilling? I don't know; that's probably worth a separate essay.Anyway, Art's wife, Laurie Pepper, put it all together based on interviews with him, and either Art is a great talker or Laurie is a great writer, or perhaps both, because no matter how many times you read about Art getting arrested or going to prison or being in rehab,you still can't tear your eyes away from this book in the hope that this time, things will be different. But they're not. Art is honest about what a messed-up person he is and how many people he's disappointed. He acknowledges raping a woman decades ago and, perhaps an even bolder admission, talks of his love/hate relationships with black musicians and the difficulty of being a white guy in jazz. This has a solid place in the pantheon of lower-depths autobiographies. less

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