THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JACK WOODFORD

by Jack Woodford ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 1962

Jack Woodford is an old guard writer-journalist remembered, if at all, as a purveyor of carbon copy novels all more/or less spewing a sort of crackerbarrel psychopathia . But his autobiography is much better: ribald, rowdy, rambling, even ridiculous, these thoughts of a 70-year old bohemian roughneck, constantly juxtaposing the past with the present and both to himself, offer a slapdash sociology and shotgun philosophy rarely found between the covers of books today. Whether resurrecting Al Capone's Chicago and its boys-in-the-back-room intelligentsia, N.Y. and Jimmy Walker, Hollywood where ""sex is something you pick up the phone for and have sent around like a bottle of beer"", or battling through a Paris Palace bawdyhouse or gabbing about his grandma and Mary Baker Eddy, his wives or daughter, or cronies Winchell, Hearst, Darrow, Chaplin, Cabell, Ben Hecht and Bodenheim, crankly candid, self-contradictory Jack Woodford is always in there pitching or pounding away. His targets: the church, that ""suppository of neurosis""; the White House, Madison Avenue and those ""Fabian Communists who run our government""; our peppermint stick diplomacy- we should take ""Krush"" before he takes us; modern literature, ""fly paper with caught spermatozoa""; and modern education, nothing but ""brainwashing"". Certainly not for the genteel, but, in spots, a loudmouthed delight.

Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1962

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION