Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

Alda, Alan

ISBN 10: 073932277X ISBN 13: 9780739322772

Publisher: Random House, 2005

Synopsis

He’s one of America’s most recognizable and acclaimed actors–a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances.

“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.

From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

Review:

"'I couldn't put it down and I couldn't stop laughing'" (Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe)

"'Alda dips and weaves through his life story with bracing unpredictability, dwelling with wry humour on the ups and downs.'" (Mail on Sunday)

"Alda's account is affecting and amusing ... An infinitely more profound and stimulating study than the standard luvvie's autobiography" (Spectator)

"'[An] entertaining autobiography tempered with humility and a depth rarely found in celebrity memoirs'" (Publishers Weekly)

"'An entertaining and profound read with a strong sense of the ridiculous'" (Ireland on Sunday)

From the Publisher:

Although it does list some of the famous women he has kissed - Jacqueline Bisset, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cycely Tyson, Jane Fonda*, Ellen Burstyn and Meryl Streep - Alan Alda's autobiography is no 'kiss and tell' catalogue, but a quirkily funny, sharply observed account of an eccentric family and a very dramatic life. [Jane Fonda gets an asterisk because, even though the script called for a kiss, she woudl only shake hands.]

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 073932277X
• ISBN 13: 9780739322772
• Binding: Audio CD