Craig Ferguson's American kilt

Last week, Craig Ferguson beat Jimmy Fallon in the late-night race for the first time. What put him over the top? Could it have been his recent memoir, "American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot"?

Eh, probably not.

Nevertheless, the book is a charming read. Unlike some in Hollywood, Ferguson writes his own books -- he published a novel, "Between the Bridge and the River," in 2006. And this memoir is, not surprisingly, full of the same humor Ferguson displays on "The Late Late Show."

"I don't say this to impress you, but I was a bed wetter until I was around eleven years old," he writes, continuing:

Then I stopped, but not for long. I started drinking alcohol regularly when I was in my early teens, at which point I returned to intermittent bed-wetting until I was 29. I haven't peed myself since the 18th of February, 1992, the day I got sober. Therefore I suppose I was a bed wetter until I was almost thirty. But I did stop before I was thirty, and I think my family and the people of Scotland should take a great deal of pride in that.

Ferguson outlines his childhood in Scotland (in a grim suburban development), his school years (undistinguished) and his career as a punk-rock drummer (intermittently successful and dissolute). Then came the comedy, which took off with his inappropriate character Bing Hitler.

Although this isn't a recovery memoir, there is a lot of drinking, because he did a lot of drinking. There are wild tales interspersed with nights (or weeks) where he has nothing to tell because he'd blacked out. He manages to avoid the trap of seeing his drinking as tragically glamorous, portrays it (without nostalgia) as both disastrous and fun. He survived it -- he might not have -- but his first marriage did not.

If Ferguson appears more candid about his early failures and successes than he is about his current late show life, it may be because he's so open about his past. He's self-deprecating without being self-pitying and shows little nostalgia for what's left behind. About his present, he details some public events -- including the decision to eulogize his father on his show, a risk that endeared him to many viewers -- but he's a bit quieter about the decision to switch agents or the daily task of putting on the show. He probably shouldnt' say too much -- he's still working in Hollywood.

And he's a true Southern California immigrant. "I proudly took the Oath of Allegiance and received my citizenship," he writes, "at Pomona Fairgrounds in Los Angeles in January 2008 along with three thousand other new Americans from Mexico, and no others from Scotland."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Mark von Holden / Getty Images

Paul Shaffer knows what to spill -- and not -- in his memoir

Paul Shaffer has shared the stage with so many big names that it's probably easier to list the stars he hasn't worked with. How many television sidekicks can boast to having played with both Andy Kaufman and his alter-ego, Tony Clifton? Such is the musical career of the lovably nebbish keyboardist from Thunder Bay, Ontario, who has tickled the ivories alongside James Brown, most of Led Zeppelin, three-quarters of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and countless others.

In his new book "We'll Be Here For The Rest Of Our Lives," the affable Shaffer hopscotches through his storied career, telling tales of working in Toronto with many of the first SCTV comedians before they were stars (Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Martin Short), moving to New York to play for Jim Steinem, the songwriter behind Meatloaf's hits, as well as with Doug Henning, and throwing in with "Saturday Night Live" (then called simply "Saturday Night") right as it was debuting.

It was at "SNL" that Shaffer collaborated with the likes of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. As musical director, part of Shaffer's duties was to work with the writers on special musical bits which is where the Blues Brothers first came to be. In the book Shaffer explains that the blues numbers were originally intended to be sung by Belushi wearing a bumble bee costume. But because the outfit was cumbersome and irritating to the star -- and to the other members of the band who were also forced to wear the costume -- Aykroyd and Belushi took it upon themselves one night to change into the iconic black suits as they warmed up the audience. It's in the middle of the book that Shaffer explains that the duo's style was influenced indirectly by a famous author.

"Why the dark suits and dark glasses?" I ask [Belushi].

"I was hipped to the look by Fred Kaz," says John, "the beatnik musical director at Second City in Chicago. He's the cat who told me that junkies always wore straight-looking outfits so they could pass. Check out William Burroughs."

If there's one glaring omission in the book it's the relative absence of any truly inside tales about the TV stints that most people relate him to: "Late Night with David Letterman" and "Late Show with David Letterman." Despite the fact that the book was written well before the latest drama involving Letterman's affairs, one would think that if you work with a guy for 27 years there'd be more than just a few pages about that relationship. But since the pair still work together, and seeing as how Letterman is Shaffer's boss, perhaps one reason that the keyboardist is still employed (and universally loved by so many celebs) is because he knows what to talk about -- and more importantly -- what not to spill.

Which isn't to say there aren't any insights in the memoir. We learn that Shaffer is such a huge fan of James Brown that he bought one of his Hammond organs; we discover that while on the road with the Blues Brothers the bespectacled musician had a dalliance with "sweet, sweet Connie" from the Grand Funk Railroad classic "We're an American Band"; and we learn that Andy Kaufman may have had an impostor sing as Tony Clifton on "Late Night."

Although the tales may not be gossip-rag juicy, they are interesting and involve many of the top names in music. And if one aside becomes tiresome, simply turn the page, Shaffer seems to always have one more chestnut from his Zelig-ish career in late night tv and music.

-- Tony Pierce

Video: Paul Shaffer interviewed at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Credit: Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times

Hulk Hogan wrote a book

And he'll be at Book Soup tonight to prove it. According to the bookstore, although there is no formal line, fans have arrived and are milling about.

Hulk Hogan is scheduled to appear at 7 p.m. with his book, "Hulk Hogan: My Life Outside the Ring." He seems like a rather unlikely author, but judging by the size of that bicep and those hands, I'm not saying anything more than that. Not saying anything more at all.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Hulk Hogan with his memoir. Credit: Jeff Christensen / Associated Press

Isabel Rucker's long, long memoir

Tonight the SOMArts Center in San Francisco holds an opening for two artists, including Isabel Rucker, whose very long memoir will be on display. How long, exactly? "The Unfurling" is more than 400 feet long, written and illustrated in graphic novel form on a 12-inch-high scroll. That's Rucker above, just after finishing the installation this week.

Rucker, who is the daughter of science fiction author and cyberpunk visionary Rudy Rucker, began work on "The Unfurling" seven years ago when she lived in San Francisco. It details both her city life and her move to rural Wyoming, off the grid. Using the scroll -- technically, three separate 150-foot rolls of paper -- allowed her to vary the width of the panels. While some are compressed, others are quite broad. The illustration of a road trip from California to Wyoming is more than 10 feet long.

 

"Initially I didn't have Jack Kerouac in mind, but after starting it, I did." Rucker told Jacket Copy via e-mail. "I love 'On the Road' and any other writing by him. A couple of years ago I had the joy of seeing the 'On the Road' scroll in person at the NYC library. It was amazing. I like to think there is a somewhat stream of consciousness similarity. I didn't have an outline for the story."

What could be the future for a graphic memoir that's 400 feet long? While "On the Road" was broken up into pages and published in book form, the design of the "The Unfurling," with its extra-wide panels, seems to resist that. Could a project like this be published as a scroll, sold in bookshelf-friendly tubes?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos, from top: Isabel Rucker with the installation of "The Unfurling"; an excerpt. Credits: Isabel Rucker

Stephen Elliott's unique confessional

If you're literary and on the Web, chances are you already know Stephen Elliott. The candid editor of the arts and culture site the Rumpus sends out almost-daily missives; he sent copies of his book "The Adderall Diaries" to people who made online requests; he's used new online connections to set up an unorthodox national book tour and blogged about it. And close to 1,000 people follow him @S___Elliott on Twitter.

Now more people know Elliott and his latest book; he's profiled in today's L.A. Times by Scott Timberg.

"People tell me, 'Oh, you've had a hard life,' " the San Francisco writer says at a shady cafe in Los Feliz on a recent trip to Los Angeles. "But compared to the kids I was in group homes with, I know their stories are worse than my story. If writing was just a competition as to who's had the hardest life, that's not a contest I want to win."

"The Adderall Diaries" is neither a Kerouac-like brag, nor an "Oprah"-ready, James Frey-style record of suffering and recovery. Rather, it is its own weird hybrid, a painfully honest and meticulously crafted memoir wrapped around a true-crime story that gets to the very essence of its time and place.

In April, Stephen Elliott talked to Jacket Copy about the Rumpus.

We focus on regular culture, not pop culture, and we try to introduce people to art they might not have heard of. At the same time, we kind of follow the rules of the Internet, which are still being formed. Our target audience is smart temps. We update at least 10 times a day. Our original features and interviews tend to be around 1,500 words, intelligent content you can read while your boss is focusing on something else. If you're wasting time, it's better to waste it on the Rumpus reading an oral history.

Or, you know, a book blog of your choice.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo is courtesy of Graywolf Press

Upcoming Andre Agassi memoir reveals drug use

In his upcoming memoir, tennis star Andre Agassi admits that in 1997 he used the recreational drug crystal meth -- or "gack," as his assistant, referred to only as Slim, called it. The book "Open: An Autobiography" will be in stores in November, but is being serialized by the Times of London beginning Thursday. And they ran this excerpt today:

Slim dumps a small pile of powder on the coffee table. He cuts it, snorts it. He cuts it again. I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve just crossed.

There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I’ve never felt such energy.

I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds...

Later, Agassi tested positive for the drug. It would mean a public suspension, and he feared, a lot more.

My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I’ve achieved, whatever I’ve worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It’s filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.

I say Slim, whom I’ve since fired, is a known drug user, and that he often spikes his sodas with meth — which is true. Then I come to the central lie of the letter. I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim’s spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.

I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it.

While the admission now may get him in hot water with some sports officials, it certainly can't hurt his book sales. How many people knew the 1992 Wimbledon champion had a memoir coming out? Now, we all do.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Andre Agassi at a 2007 press conference. Credit: Ian Salas / EPA

Ghostwritten books of the past, and a poll: Who's being ghosted now?

In a twist on Halloween, the online bookseller Abebooks has collected its top 10 ghostwritten books. The best story -- although perhaps the worst-written -- is of actress Hedy Lamarr. Although she was listed as the sole author of her memoir, "Ecstasy and Me," she found it so riddled with lies -- penned by ghostwriter Leo Guild -- that she sued the publisher. Whoops.

Some very literary writers worked as ghostwriters: Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis, Larry McMurtry and H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote a book for Harry Houdini.

These days, there are plenty of celebrities putting out books. Some of those books share credit with the writer who does the sentence-lifting -- like Neil Strauss, who co-wrote memoirs by Marilyn Manson, Jenna Jameson and Dave Navarro. His name appears on the covers of their books.

But not all high-profile people who publish books name a coauthor. Do you think they're sitting down at the laptop, day after day? Or is it possible any of these authors has a ghost -- ephemeral, invisible -- typing away, behind the scenes? Cast your vote for the book you think is most likely to have been ghostwritten.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos: left, Lauren Conrad; credit, Kristian Dowling / Getty Images. Right: Howard Stern, credit: Getty Images

A peaceful memoir festival gets a harrowing tale

This weekend the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, N.Y., is holding a memoir workshop featuring the poet, playwright and memoirist Nick Flynn.

The Omega Institute is a 30-year-old retreat -- the kind of place where communal vegetarian dining, yoga and meditation give shape to the day.

Seems like an odd fit for the author of "Another ... Night in ... City," a memoir with a title that's profane enough to send your average family newspaper into fits of ellipses, a book that Mark Doty called "ferocious ... harrowing."

In it, Flynn recounts his troubled family history: His mother committed suicide when he was 22, and later, when Flynn was working at a Boston-area homeless shelter, his long-estranged father surfaced there as a client.

"I couldn't imaging anything worse, really," he told Robert Birnbaum for Identity Theory in 2005. Yet he continued:

People say with the book sometimes, "How did you write this book, it has no self-pity? It's compassionate. Dah, dah, dah." I say you should have seen the drafts. They are full of self-pity and ridiculous rages. And I edited them out mostly because when you look at the stuff on page it doesn't ring true, actually. It does feel like a diversion from the essential state. Which, hopefully if you can get to it, is a little purer.

So maybe Flynn won't be as odd a fit with the authors of "The Guru Looked Good" and "A Monk Swimming" after all.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Nick Flynn. Credit: Carolyn Cole  Los Angeles Times

Danzy Senna's racial history -- is it just personal?

In the pages of the L.A. Times, Erin Aubry Kaplan reviews "Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History" by Danzy Senna.

Senna is the daughter of Carl Senna and Fanny Howe, two gifted writers whose marriage in 1968 shone with a defiant but hopeful symbolism of the age. He was black, she was white; he was an upstart, a figure who emerged from a new, intellectually empowered black class; she came from a prominent Boston family whose roots went back to the Mayflower (and, as it happens, to wealthy slave-traders)....

In the introduction to her new memoir, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?," Senna bluntly addresses the question in describing how she felt watching her father devolve over the years from a proud symbol of racial accomplishment into something painfully ordinary: a loser who drank, got fired from his job and once beat her mother in public. "Gone was the 'negro of exceptional promise,' " Senna writes with almost palpable disappointment and some embarrassment, "and in its stead he lived up to all the stereotypes that his fellow Americans had ever secretly or not-so-secretly harbored about black men."

Senna's parents divorced in 1976. In this book, she takes on the task of unearthing her father's history -- with his help -- and finds it's a more complicated story than she'd expected. Read the complete review here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Writing memoir: Whose underwear is it, anyway?

L.A. writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh is getting divorced, not that it's any of my business. Except Loh has made her life the basis for her stories -- she includes her children, their education, her father and, in one famously unbleeped moment, her musician husband -- so writing about the divorce was probably unavoidable. In a piece in the Atlantic Monthly:

Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued.

Loh writes of what she did for the marriage, then turns her attention to a few marriage books. But she really gets going when she recounts conversations she's had with her girlfriends, who share their marriage complaints with Loh once hers has broken apart. From the piece:

Passing note: Ellen has been married for 18 years, and she also, famously, never has sex. There were the hot 20s with Ron and the making-the-babies 30s, and in the 40s there is … nothing. Ellen had originally picked Ron because she was tired of all the bad boys, and Ron was settle-down husband material. What she didn’t know was that after the age of 38, thanks to Mr. Very Settled-Down, she was never going to have regular sex with a man again.

Well, if Ellen's marriage wasn't exactly famous before, it sure is now. But are there boundaries that should be respected when writing memoir? Should anything be considered off limits?

That's what Marion Winik asks in an essay in today's Times book section. Winik, who has written about drug use and assisted suicide, considers the moral implications of the memoir.

This was the beginning of my understanding of the most serious moral principle of memoir: The act of writing about another person occurs not just in the world of literature but in real life. It cannot help but change your relationship, and this should be the first thing you think about.

Winik is concerned that the doctor author of "The Addict" may not have informed his patient that her story had formed the basis of a new book. "Was it possible that this patient not only hadn't agreed to be portrayed in the book, but did not know Stein had written it?" She asks. "And if so, wouldn't that be a terrible violation?"

Yet she notes that a memoirist always has his or her own memories,  perceptions from which that person writes. After all, the doctor treated the patient -- so the story is his too.

Is it possible to draw a line around what a writer cannot use in a story? Do the family members and friends of memoirists have any right to ask that they be excluded from the work? When it comes to airing laundry -- clean or dirty -- will it always be the person with the pen who decides what's fair game?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Sandra Tsing Loh presents L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with a pair of panties from her Mothers on Fire campaign for more parent choice in public education in May 2009. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times