Cameron Crowe's "The Uncool" Is An "Ask Me Anything" Meal

“I skipped adolescence,” writes Cameron Crowe in his memoir “The Uncool," which became an immediate bestseller this week, “I’d traded it for a backstage pass.” 

As a longtime Crowe stan and friend, I’ll confess he had me at hello, but anyone who still reads books could happily drink up the well-paced, vibrant reportage as Crowe’s skeins of memory pull aside the veil of his indefatigable (and sincere) charm to show the writer’s vulnerability and filial love—revelations of the sort that might come in a late-night conversation. And he had those with just about any rock icon you care to name ( David Bowie as  your speed-freak -y, asrsehole buddy, anyone? Bonus points tallied for such outliers as  Cesar Chavez—“Ask me anything”—and Crowe's prank call to a mic-dropping Cary Grant.)   You may not find so `uncool' the passage where he flips the reader from a dizzyingly acute dive into his own youthful Elvis moment to– in the same week– also bringing his beloved but seldom easy mom Alice to reckon with the wonders of Derek and the Dominoes. There’s more coming in a subsequent book that will detail the film career;  we barely glimpse him, oh yeah, winning the Oscar for 2000’s  “Almost Famous” screenplay– or having planted a giant writer/director footprint with 1996’s ”Jerry Maguire.” It’s the subsequent challenge of doing "Almost Famous" as a musical that is movingly mingled with a profound and tender family story, making this book a truth-telling journey of rich, witty, and universal depth. 

The recurring theme is the primacy of the human voice. Still, as his every screenplay and interview has shown, the man has the skills on the page that join his wit and eye for detail into a narrative that is a reader's frolic-even with some "otherworldly" notes. Recommended, to say the least.