American On Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot Review

I like biographies.  Always have.  One of the first ones I remember reading was about Hammerin' Hank Aaron. Don't remember the title, but if you don't know who he is, you must not be American.  But Craig Ferguson is, and he's proud of it.  American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot is the story of how a young man born in Glasgow, Scotland realized a dream he formulated very early in life, to come to America.  See he had, and apparently still has, a view of this county only someone who wasn't raised here can have.  That it's the best place in the world to be living.   Unlike an awful lot of us, he considers himself lucky to be an American.

Telling us right in the preface that, "This is not journalism.  This is just my story.", Mr Ferguson proceeds to craft a fine piece of writing that spares us the self-indulgent "pat-my-own-back" mentality found in a lot of Hollywood memoirs.   What we get, instead is the man who became famous as Mr. Wick on the Drew Carey Show, warts and well more warts.

If you've watched The Late Late Show, you know Craig Ferguson is a witty, charming man completely devoid of pomposity who genuinely likes to listen to other people's stories.  And, as he's telling his here, he comes across as those things and more.  He's a man who's wrestled with, and lost to, a few demons of his own making, always giving someone else the credit for helping him get out of the muck and blaming only himself when he chose to wallow in it. With self-effacing humor he leads us down the road of his life, stopping off at all the interesting and some of the damning points that culminate in making him who he is.  A man who, had Peter Graves asked him in the movie Airplane if he "likes gladiator movies", would have sheepishly said, "yes", just to see the look on Grave's face.

Painting himself as a mischievous malcontent, Ferguson starts with his appearance as the "talent" at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, needling the Republicans in power at the time and recalling his encounters with the D.C Elite, and how just about any of us, no matter our lot in life, would do as he did upon meeting the sitting President of the United States.  Even though he had formulated a dozen ways in his mind to call  Mr. Bush on the carpet for all the things he thought Mr. President  had done wrong, all he could manage was a polite, "Hello, sir, nice to meet you."  For, as Craig so eloquently put it, "Even if you don't agree with the man and his policies, he's still the f#$%%ing president."   And that little encounter tells us something we need to know about Ferguson.  He knows when to show respect.  And he does that often in his memoir.

From there he guides us through his childhood as the black sheep son of a Scotsman and his wife, whom he likens to Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, who lived through WWII and imparted the values of hard work and caring for others to him.  It just took him a while to get past the street toughs (of which he became one), the booze and the drugs to appreciate the things they stood for.

He's candid and funny, "I don't say this to try and impress you but I was a bed wetter until I was around eleven years old. Then I stopped, but not for long."    Telling us he was a fat kid with a school teacher who, when he thinks of her after twenty-five years in show business and two failed marriages, realizes she was "without question the most colossal f#$%^ing bitch I have ever met in my life.".   Who hasn't had one of THOSE teachers in thier life?  Opinionated and point blank as he describes divorce lawyers, "I like to believe that there is an extra warm corner of hell for these f---ers who traffic in emotional misery." He can also be poignant and emotional, as when describing his reaction to the death of his father. "I knew I couldn't do a regular show, there was no comedy in me, so instead we turned the whole thing into a wake for my father."

THE BOTTOM LINE

I read a criticism of American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot that essentially said they didn't like the book because the title was misleading and only the last chapter dealt with Craig's becoming an American.  That reader missed the point.  Every single page is about his journey to America, the addictions he overcame, the loves he lost and the gratitude he felt and now feels and all the events, including being a punk rocker,  that brought him to these shores.  He speaks to us in a narrative voice that is conversational, revealing and both proud and self-loathing, to an extent.  Mr Ferguson makes us realize he's just a dude with a dream who tried to destroy himself and was saved by unlikely heroes (he failed to carry out his suicide attempt when a friend offered him a drink).  Like many, he found success in-spite of himself, not because of himself.

This book is highly readable, funny and introduces us to a lot of characters, some zany, some evil and some heroic.  Craig reveals his life as it unfolded through a haze of drugs and alcohol coming out the other side as sometimes a farty dirty old man (wait, I think he was talking about Larry King), but more often a compassionate, caring gentleman who appreciates the opportunity he's been given.  Before reading his book, I already respected Craig Ferguson as an entertainer.  Now I respect him even more as a man and a fellow American.  GRADE: A