DrFaustus's Full Review: In Me Own Words: The Autobiography Of Bigfoot Book...
We can get brand new autobiographies of musicians, movie stars, serial killers, politicians, athletes, or any combination of the above, but chances are there wont be anything we haven't heard before. We can even get an autobiography from a famous recluse, like Howard Hughes or J.D. Salinger, but there still won't be too much to surprise up. In today's modern, thrill-a-minute world, the only way we'll get an autobiography take us by surprise is if we get one from someone that may not even exist.
Bigfoot may have seen his fair share of media exposure with films like Harry and the Hendersons and TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries, but he is always portrayed as the outsider, the mysterious loner. Never do we get to see the tortured soul that lurks beneath the tangled mass of matted with dirt and leaves. Never, that is, until, with In Me Own Words: the Autobiography of Bigfoot.
(Yes, admittedly, Bigfoot remains as much of an enigma now as he has even been. He hasn't staggered out of the woods in the Pacific Northwest and wandered into the offices of Manic D Press to sign a publishing deal. The Bigfoot presented here is a literary invention of esoteric artist Graham Roumieu. The truth can be so boring, though. It's much more fun to pretend.)
The book itself is pretty thin, weighing in at only forty-four pages, but in that short space, Bigfoot manages to address quite a few facets of his life. Add to that his rather limited grasp of English grammar and vocabulary, and the extent of his literary accomplishments really starts to shine.
Some of the personal demons that Bigfoot addresses come as no surprise. He writes about his frustrations with being stalked by X-Files fans and complains about the annoyances of living deep in the woods, particularly the abundance of squirrels out there. (He goes so far as to comment, "What I wouldn't give to whack them with badminton racquet. They shave bad word in Bigfoot back fur. I mean come on. Why they be trippin' on me.")
Other revelations the Bigfoot exposes to us are a bit more unexpected and surprising. He rants about how Chewbacca is nothing more than a "phony loser" and details the rise and fall of his grunge rock band, the Tinkles. There's an account of both his doomed political career and his doomed movie career. Perhaps most surprising, though, is the admission that Bigfoot has a constant struggle with eating disorders, most notably the tendency to eat people. He certainly means well, but he always seems to get frustrated dealing with more civilized people meats, smashing them with a log and feasting on their bodies in a crazed bloodlust. Truly Bigfoot is a tragic figure fraught with misunderstandings.
All in all, In Me Own Words comes across as less of an actual biography, and more of a personal scrapbook. Each of the stories, or "episodes," if you will, covers only two pages. The text is scrawled crookedly across the paper in Bigfoot's distinctive sloppy handwriting. The writing is only a small part of the wonder and magic of the book, though. On one set of pages, the entire text reads only "Hair go. No could comb over." Most of the space on each page is taken up by crude ink and watercolor pictures that highlight whatever anecdotes Bigfoot happens to be recounting at the moment. A times, these pictures can be a smidge disturbing (such as when he brings up his brief cross dressing experiments or when he tries to show off his dance moves in the section labeled "I You Private Dancer"), but there's a stark, brutal, beautiful honesty to the pictures, like a kindergartener trying to explain his nightmares to a child psychiatrist.
Bigfoot has clearly been getting out into the world a lot more than the skeptical media would have us believe. Bigfoot name-drops a number of B, C, and D list celebrities throughout his stories, including Pat Morita, Koko the Gorilla, the guy who did those sound effects in the Police Academy movies, and Dan Rather (whose hair Bigfoot admires).
In Me Own Words isn't for everybody. For one thing, it looks like a children's book, but the humor is far too sophisticated (and too creepy, at times) for growing young minds. It also takes a certain sense of humor to appreciate the text. Non-sequeters abound throughout the book, and if you can't see the tragicomic humor in Bigfoot pining for his dead hamster Denis and writing "Why, Denis, why? You candle burn out long before you legend ever did," you probably won't appreciate any of the book.
If you're the kind of person who like to collect strange knick-knacks and bizarre, esoteric books that you can pull of the shelves when friends come to visit, handing them over and saying "you've got to read this book, it's so totally messed up and it'll blow your mind," you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. If you happen to know one of those people (and are able to put up with the bizarre tastes they foist upon you), pick up a copy of In Me Own Words for their next birthday. When you give it to them, don't make any sudden movements, and just back away slowly. People like us can be dangerous.
America s favorite crypto-zoological hominid is hilariously recast as the modern-day everyman, struggling with eating disorders, casual cannibalism, p...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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