Dick Gregory (1932–2017)

I mentioned I was a sucker for a provocative title when I reviewed Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, and one of my friends (Hi, Dave!) pointed me toward this.

I was not very familiar with Dick Gregory before cracking the cover, and in many ways I feel I still am not since this autobiography only goes up through 1963 as he is first breaking big in his stand-up career and starting his involvement with the Civil Rights Movement.

Nearly half the book is given over to his childhood of poverty and his success as a high school and collegiate runner. It's often heartbreaking and disturbing, but sometimes suffers from that sort of old man embellished storytelling -- y'know, like, I went to and from school in a giant blizzard uphill both ways -- with Gregory frequently reminding us that he was a bullshit artist and hustler, casting a bit of doubt over the reliability of his narration.

The portion about his comedy routines is a bit lacking in the actual jokes he told but includes enough to make me want to seek out some of his recorded performances.

The final section is the most dramatic as he uses his fame to bring attention to the growing Civil Rights Movement, but he breezes in and out of events and locations pretty quickly, flying into a southern state for a protest and flying out to perform a show across the country. A personal tragedy gets twined awkwardly into this section, and then the book abruptly ends with a brilliant speech he gives in Selma to help promote a voter registration drive.

I don't think this is an ideal introduction to Dick Gregory for someone as ignorant of him as I was, but it has certainly whetted my appetite to learn more about him.… (meer)

The Essential Dick Gregory is an absolute gem, combining various works of his to tell his life story as well as his ideas and beliefs. A remarkable man in his own words.

While the book is organized in a rough thematic form, it is also largely chronological, so it is as much a memoir as it is a collection of his work. What makes this especially strong is that the excerpts and complete shorter works are from various periods of his life. While other memoirs generally consist of a person reflecting and, to a large extent, smoothing the rough edges of their life, these are Gregory's words at those moments of time or at least much closer to them.

I'm not sure he would have wanted to "smooth" his story even if he had written this as a single work, part of what is so amazing about him was his ability to grasp so much even in the moment. My memories of him are largely from TV when I was young and a couple of albums. Later I became aware of the breadth of his activism through interviews and yet more reading.

One of the many things in the book that speak to our current environment as much as it did at the time (1973, in a monologue about Watergate): "anytime you get people that's in control of a nation, any nation, that talk about law and order and never talk about justice, there is a Watergate somewhere close by." He recognized then that "law and order" is a dog whistle, and under the recent orange menace the dogs came out of the darkness and are trying to destroy what democracy we do have.

I would highly recommend this to those who like memoirs as well as those who like to read about truly inspiring people. Gregory almost always saw things from a very considered and intentional perspective. Will you agree, from this much later date, with everything he said? Probably not. But you will be hard pressed to find any kind of malice in his opinions.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)