MY DADDY WAS A PISTOL AND I'M A SON OF A GUN

by Lewis Grizzard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 1986

More humor from the heartland by the Atlanta columnist and author of a half-dozen polyphonetic titles, most recently Elvis Is Dead, And I Don't Feel So Good Myself and Shoot Low, Boys--They're Riding Shetland Ponies. This memoir of his father offers a stronger, sadder theme to the usual mix of good-ol'-boy joke-telling and heartstring-plucking. The working title for the book was My Daddy, and it is just that sentimental, from start to finish. Initially, Grizzard fans will probably call out for louder and funnier, but this is a relatively quiet book. It is a tragedy, and, for a change, one having little to do with the author's own romantic disasters. Daddy Grizzard was a battlefield hero in WW II and Korea, but his medals cost him dearly. He returned from Korea an alcoholic, unable to ""straighten out his life"" for more than six months at a time. He was soon divorced, to become a wanderer whose charm, wonderful singing voice, and sincerity could always find him that next job. He worked as a coach, teacher, restaurant manager, until the next bender rolled around. He cadged money from hundreds of innocents, remarried a couple times, and finally died of a stroke during a drinking binge. Even as the older man became a shameful burden, his only son admired his character, even imitated him, in both flaws and virtues. Grizzard writes with a newspaperman's impatience, leaping ahead to give the high points of the chronology and then finding himself with nothing new to say when he reaches that point in the story, but the occasional arrogance of his humor is here leavened by an essentially humanizing story. By the end of the book, it is hard to remember when it stopped trying to be funny and hard to forget the powerful image of a good man gone astray.

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Villard/Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION