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4.0 out of 5 stars
More Confessions from the Kamikaze Cowboy, May 27, 2008
This review is from: And Then We Went Fishing: A Story of Fatherhood, Fate and Forgiveness (Paperback)
For most of my life, I knew Dirk Benedict as the guy starring in two of the more prominent TV series of my youth - BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and THE A-TEAM. Like a lot of people, I have a tendency to associate the personality of an actor with that of the role(s) he plays, and I assumed DB was a cigar-chewing, featherheaded adrenaline-junkie interested mainly in chasing women. Two years ago, however, I bought his book CONFESSIONS OF A KAMIKAZE COWBOY, and I discovered that he is a cigar-chewing, deep-thinking adrenaline-junkie interested in changing the world...when he isn't chasing women.
Long story short, Benedict grew up in rural Montana on a diet of beef and...other kinds of beef. In later life, he suffered acute health problems, including prostatic cancer, which gradually chivvied him into a different way of eating, drinking and looking at the world. He's since become a kind of spokesperson for an alternative philosophy of life, and COWBOY is a sort-of Bible of that philosophy. Its central theme, however, is how the food choices we make effect not only our physical but our emotional and spiritual health as well. ("Someone," he wrote in its introduction. "Needs to do for brown rice and bancha tea what John Wayne did for red meat and whiskey.") AND THEN WE WENT FISHING is a related but very different type of book, in a way far more personal than COWBOY was. Like COWBOY, it has a clear-cut message garnered from autobiographical experience; unlike COWBOY it is not about changing the world. It is about changing oneself by letting go of pain, regret and grief and learning the lessons of one's own past experience. It's about, to paraphrase Poe (the singer, not the writer) "One more look at the ghost, before I make it leave."
FISHING is two books in one. In the first story, Dirk and his then-wife Toni are preparing for the at-home birth of their first child, a disaster-plagued affair which is half-comedy, half-nightmare: the midwife deserts them for a Chuck Norris benefit, the assistant is interested only in raiding the fridge and napping, the last-resort doctor is out of town, and an anonymous functionary at the nearest hospital (50 miles away) does his best to make matters worse. The second story takes place 25 years earlier, with Dirk an 18 year old kid who seemingly has it all: good looks, athletic talent, hot girlfriend, bright future. Unforunately, he also has crippling emotional pain, brought on by the death of his father at the hands of his brother following a nasty domestic argument. The shooting, which Dirk witnessed, effected him in many different ways, but most deeply by giving him a crippling fear of fatherhood. And as he comes closer to becoming a father himself, he realizes just how effectively he has deferred the pain of his dad's death, and how dangerous that deferrment will be if he doesn't discover the lesson buried under his emotional denials. The birth of his son proves to be the opportunity he has long awaited: the chance to lay his father's ghost to rest, and to shed the tears he held back for a quarter of a century.
AND THEN WE WENT FISHING is not the book KAMIKAZE COWBOY was, but it was not meant to be. It is an intensely personal story of choices and consequences -
"fate, fatherhood, and forgiveness" - mingled with wit, sarcasm and irony (the fact that medical-establishment-hating Benedict had to deliver his kid via a regular doctor is a subject he approaches with no small amount of chagrin). Those looking for a sequel to COWBOY, or a memior about DB's acting career, will be disappointed, but those looking for inspiration will find their money well spent.
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