Memoirs of a Fool: Volume I

MEMOIRS OF A FOOL: Volume One is highly unique. It highlights the failures of the memoirist, David Renner, rather than his successes. And as such, it strikes a chord of familiarity in all of us. From the President of the United States on down, the life of each of us is dominated by failures, many of which begin as successes. For every triumph in life there is a corresponding defeat, something we might note before we rush in, fools, to our next grand venture.

Renner doesn’t rush into anything. He chronicles the inevitable setbacks in his life with a steady, stoic humor. To him, existence was summed up by the Firesign Theatre in 1971, when they released their signature album, I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus. With this thought as his anchor, Renner neither soars with his successes nor collapses with his failures. He simply glides or stumbles through his paces as the lead actor in a comedy.

There are serious moments in Renner’s story, which he traces back to Transylvania in Hungary, the birthplace of his parents. There is a dark family secret that he doesn’t learn until, at seventeen, he’s ready to go out into the world. There is his service in Air Force Intelligence inside Communist territory at the height of the Cold War. There is the surreal sight of Detroit, where he is living in 1967, on fire during the riots there. There are the strange days in the streets during the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. And there is the decade-long drug addiction and the pain of lost love. But in this working-class saga the light moments outweigh the heavy ones, and ultimately Renner’s self-deprecating sense of humor brings him success in one important respect, as a human being.