Citizen Reader

I was terribly, terribly disappointed in Jeff Garlin's celebrity memoir My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World.

Jeff Garlin, if you don't know him, is a stand-up comedian, and is now most well known for his role as Larry David's manager on David's popular HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. He's very, very funny in that show (the actress who plays his no-nonsense wife is pretty hilarious too), and I've seen him be witty on talk shows, so I had high hopes for his memoir.

Now, this post cannot be construed as anything remotely approaching a "review," as I only managed to read about 30 pages of the book before I had to stop. There are two main themes: Garlin's weight problem and food addiction (and his many attempts to lose weight), and his near-obsession with living green. I knew about the first theme, because I have seen Garlin talk about his weight problem. (My favorite anecdote: he told a story in which he tried on a new shirt, and his wife told him it made him look fat, to which he replied, "in all fairness, honey, I make the shirt look fat.") But the green-living and recycling bits just aren't that interesting, and the whole thing is written in diary style, which always just strikes me as the height of phoning it in when one is writing a memoir. So, nothing against Jeff Garlin (just watch Curb Your Enthusiasm if you want to see him at his best), but this book is going back to the library today.