There was nothing ordinary about Paul Newman (1925-2008), the Oscar-winning actor, prize-winning race car driver, and philanthropist who gave away more than $570 million to charities. In The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, Newman never dwells on his accomplishments and, instead, uses the memoir like a long therapy session for soul-searching. Plagued with chronic insecurity, he felt for most of his life like an impostor who achieved success through luck rather than talent.
Between 1986 and 1991, Newman (In Pursuit of the Common Good, with A.E. Hotchner) taped conversations with friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern, who also interviewed many of Newman's family, friends and coworkers. Newman lost interest. The audiotapes were transcribed and forgotten. This posthumous memoir is a chronological, multi-voiced oral history, distilled from the 14,000 transcript pages. Although there are tales of filming Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hud and The Sting, Newman is more interested in discussing such serious issues as his alcoholism. Joanne Woodward, his wife of 50 years, says, "I used to think the only peace Paul ever found was that peace he used to find in being dead drunk." The addictive personality was passed down to his son, Scott, who died of a drug overdose at age 28. Newman writes with heartbreaking insight and guilt about his son's long descent into addiction, rehab, and death.
This unforgettable and extraordinary memoir is a breathtakingly honest mea culpa from a complicated man striving to excavate his demons; according to Newman's daughter Clea, who writes the memoir's afterword, he succeeded in his final decades. --Kevin Howell, reviewer