Random House
September 2006
On Sale: September 12, 2006
Featuring: Alan Alda
272 pages ISBN: 0812974409 EAN: 9780812974409 Trade Size (reprint) Add to Wish List
He's one of America's most recognizable and acclaimed
actors--a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The
Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting,
writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H.
Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and
affecting as his greatest performances.
"My mother
didn't try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda's
irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving
but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood
backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and
went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary
success in his profession.
Yet Never Have Your
Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and
downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into
a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.
It is the story of turning points in Alda's life,
events that would make him what he is--if only he could
survive them.
From the moment as a boy when his dead
dog is returned from the taxidermist's shop with a hideous
expression on his face, and he learns that death can't be
undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for
the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance
of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda
learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and
transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness
is found in embracing them.
Never Have Your Dog
Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor,
and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor,
author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a
life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda
has ever played on the stage or screen.