Really Late Reviews: When Heroes Disappoint

Michael Palin, Diaries 1969-1979, St. Martin's Press/Thomas Dunne Books, First Ed. 2006

Let me get this out of the way from the get-go: I am a fan of Michael Palin. I love his multiple BBC travel series (aired in the States on PBS and the Travel Channel), and I have just about every book he has published in the last 20 years. He's one of the good ones, and the "nice" guy from Monty Python. So it's with a touch of bittersweet that I have to say this book was a letdown. Oh sure, it has its moments, but not enough to justify the heft (608 pages of text, plus a 42 page index) or the time commitment needed. Palin is a "diarist," a person who keeps a diary, and this collection (edited down substantially from the original source material) spans 10 years in length, from the beginnings of Monty Python's Flying Circus on BBC TV to the release of Monty Python's Life of Brian film. But to call this a Python book would be extremely misleading, because it is a keyhole's peep (the entries are usually only a couple sentences long) into the life of a family man, one who is involved in his community, with ailing parents to worry about, and, oh yes a burgeoning celebrity as well. As such, the result is a bit of a mismash-- a Python tidbit here, a complaint about his father's hospitalization there, and utterly mundane commentary about books, and movies he's gone to see that day. The one thing that stood out for me was Palin's near-obsession with food and baths. Readers and viewers of his travelogues (all uniformly excellent, by the by) already know about Michael's love of a good bath, but hokey smokes, reading in some detail about what he had for lunch for 10 years straight tends to wear. Example: Page 418, Monday, November 1, 1977 includes "... Have a Glenmorangie at the bar and a good meal of haddock in a patsie and pheasant and cheese." The juicy bits are certainly there, and Palin takes being a celebrity in stride-- if anything, he seems a bit embarrassed by it all. But in releasing this, he probably burned his bridges with the remaining Pythons, except possibly Terry Gilliam. Let's see... He reveals that Terry Jones is insecure and clingy, John Cleese clearly is in it for the money and seems to put up with everybody just to get a paycheck, Eric Idle is a moody spendthrift gone Hollywood, and Graham Chapman is an alcoholic lout for most of the book (he gets sober in the end, and Palin's feelings towards Graham warm considerably). Other interesting tidbits include his whirlwind weeks' hosting "Saturday Night Live," his friendship with Beatle George Harrison, and some great showbiz insights including the making of the Python movies. But as I read this all, it just sort of tarnished everybody-- it's never a good thing to put anybody on a pedestal, and I'm far from being a diehard Python fanatic, but hearing of celebrities' (especially ones you like) personal foibles made me feel a bit angry and disappointed at the fella dishing them out. True enough, these were raw feelings from a diary, never more than 24 hours from that day's events and interactions with people, but still... I don't think I needed to read this. The gossipy, non-dirt dishing portions of this book left me gasping for more-- I wanted to hear more of Mick Jagger's impersonation of Johnny Rotten and George Harrison's sneaking onstage in full disguise just to sing "The Lumberjack Song" when the Pythons hit Broadway (good stories both), and the Python's constant battle with the censors-- but they were far outweighed by the mundane stuff-- the meeting with his tax accountant gets equal coverage as the story of Margot Kidder flicking Christopher Reeve's Super-package (a metal codpiece that pinged) during the breaks on Superman. But I'm a genuine fan of Michael Palin, so I'll be charitable and give this a near-miss.