ALMOST A FAMOUS PERSON

by Herb Michelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 1979

In 1968-69, Bob Presley was Berkeley's star center; in 1975, he was dead, apparently a suicide. As a seven-foot basketball player from the Detroit ghetto, Presley was too visible--sportswriter Michelson suggests--for his limited talent, intelligence, or strength of character. Michelson opens this fictionalized reconstruction of Presley's life with his final moments, then picks up the senior Presleys in rural Alabama and carries the story forward. After a childhood of never enough, of starts and stops and chronic maladjustment, ""Tree"" Presley landed at Berkeley--one of the two-percent (many of them jocks) admitted below academic par. There, he became the unwitting focus of radical activities and racial tensions, and so--as we see it--never achieved his playing potential. Signed by Denver, but fearful of both success and failure, he quit before playing a single pro game. Then came some erratic play in the Philippines and in Europe, an unsuccessful tryout with Miami, and finally semi-pro ball and a janitor's job. In between, Presley tried passing bad checks, running a bar, pimping--and failed at each. His relationships with women--mostly white, and a large part of this story--were invariably dependent, violent, and exploitative. When at last he saw himself making less money than his wife, doing the housework, and nowhere in basketball, Presley started to wear women's clothes and lose his grip on reality. To the end, it's crude and melodramatic, but you needn't buy it as a social document to be sucked in.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION