So Anyway

So Anyway - by John Cleese

If you knew absolutely nothing about visual arts nor pop culture, and you ran into John Cleese on the street, you would have no idea that he is one of the funniest men on the planet. All comedians have a certain shtick, and whereas Cleese has definitely changed his persona during the last fifty years, he remains a fascinating character because he has a very cerebral approach to everything.  Listening to the man, you don’t feel as though he’s trying to make you laugh, but you rather feel as though he’s trying to take everything we know about life and put it inside a nice, neat, gift-wrapped box.  He’s a fascinating person to listen to, yet in spite of these characteristics, he still manages to laugh a lot himself, and in turn, make others around him laugh as well.

I say this because this autobiography is not really a “funny” book.  Many times when comedians record their memoirs, they feel it necessary to litter the writing with witty one liners and clever anecdotes throughout the pages.  For the most part, John Cleese avoids this with this book.  That’s not to say that nothing in this book his funny.  No, there are times when he’ll surprise and shock you and make you fall over with laughter while recalling a certain memory.  This is just the man’s style.

You also should be warned that this is not a “Python” book.  For whatever reason, this book basically ends as Monty Python begins.  I’m not entirely sure why.  Perhaps it’s because the antics of his life have already been well documented once he began performing with Python in the late 1960s.  This book takes the reader on a journey through Cleese’s life as a young boy, attending public school, becoming a school teacher, getting a degree to practice law, and eventually writing and performing comedy.  Writing comedy was never his dream, he actually ended up doing it by accident, realized he was very good at it, kept working at various jobs and, and once Python arrived, stuck to it for good.

You might think that you would be shortchanged since the most memorable parts of Cleese’s life are excluded here.  After all, does anyone really want to read a book about a person that leaves out his most well-known portions of his career?  Oddly, I didn’t feel cheated.  John Cleese is simply a superb raconteur, and I found all aspects of his early life to be quite fascinating.  Again, one can see his brain gathering material from an everyman’s day to day life that eventually would blossom into comedy.  It must be said that this book would definitely NOT have worked had this not been an autobiography, yet rather a biography written by anyone other than John Cleese.  It’s not his life that is particularly fascinating, yet his observations and tales of his memories that are such a joy to read.

Once he does begin writing and performing for the BBC in the 1960s (many of those shows have literally been erased from their original tapes), he does include in this retrospective some of the scripts of some of the selected skits and, depending on one’s imagination, are either quite welcome or could seem stiff at times. He did an awful lot in the few years before Python, and it’s quite obvious that he accumulated quite a bit of experience that helped him shine during his Python and Fawlty Towers days.

Sometimes the man’s honesty can get him a wee bit of trouble, but this definitely doesn’t bother the man one bit.  Example: A few years ago, he went on a standup tour that he called something like “The Alimony Tour”.  He explained that he did not want to go out on the road and perform, but he simply had to because he owed money to one of his ex-wives.  A bit sardonic if you’re in the audience and discover such a thing, but in a strange way, this, again, is part of the man’s charm.  I raise this issue because there are some that say that this is also the reason for him writing this book – simply a way to cash in without divulging any stories from the glory days of his career.  I certainly didn’t feel that way, however.  I loved reading about his descriptions of his early life.  I must also say, however, that if he ever pens a follow up that does detail the latter half of his career, I’ll definitely snap it up as soon as possible.  I simply love to listen to the man – even if he isn’t making me break down in hysterics.