Book Review

Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy

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And Then We Went Fishing

These two autobiographies by Dirk Benedict are unlike any autobiography I’ve ever read.  They are not just the stories about his life.  They are not simply made up of anecdotes.  They don’t exist to give you more information about the man.  Benedict has a lot of very strong opinions and I think these books, particularly Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy are a way of getting those opinions out there as fully as he can. 

His main point in Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy is ‘you are what you eat.’  Never have I thought so much about that phrase.  I rarely ever think about what I eat and when I do, it’s more about vanity (I want to be thinner) than about health.  I have to admit, I’m intrigued by his story.  When he found out he had prostate cancer, he shut himself away in a secluded cabin in New Hampshire and stuck to a very strict macrobiotic diet and healed himself.  I’ve never heard of anything like this.  I think rejecting doctors and going off on your own when you’ve been diagnosed with the big ‘C’ takes incredible courage and faith.  I’m not sure I have it in me.  On the other hand, Benedict has a very harsh view of doctors.  I don’t think they are as bad as he makes them out to be, but I see his point as well.  I don’t think anyone should blindly trust their doctors.  They make mistakes.  They’re human too.  The idea that you can avoid diseases that appear to be just a part of life now (cancer, high blood pressure) is nice.  I certainly believe it has merits.  We do stuff ourselves with junk food.  It’s so readily available and there’s so much of it.  I never finish a full plate at a restaurant because they pile so much food onto it.

            However, I don’t agree with everything he says.  He gets pretty extreme.  For example, he really believes that women belong in the kitchen and that they should be content with just being able to have children.  He sees childbirth as an amazing thing and he repeatedly says that women are stronger than men.  Thanks for the compliment, but, just because we can doesn’t mean we have to.  He basically says that all women who choose not to have children end up regretting it and desperately try to get pregnant when they’re older.  I sincerely doubt he knows that for a fact about every woman out there.  Off the top of my head, I can think of one woman I know who is at least in her late 50’s childless by choice and perfectly happy with that.  He doesn’t need to speak for women and I wish he wouldn’t.  Maybe I’m being too harsh and he didn’t mean these things in the way I interpreted them, but I’m just giving my opinion based on what I read.

            Aside from all of that, he is a deeply fascinating individual and macrobiotics is obviously something he strongly believes in.  And he’s still alive, cancer free, and in great health.  I think he made a pretty great life choice.  It made me think, how right is he about food?  Can cancer really be the result of all the junk food we eat?  That’s kind of horrifying to me.  A disease so awful and we do it to ourselves?  Are snack food companies just as bad as cigarette companies?  Possibly.  I think it is definitely something to think about.  No matter how I feel about some of his more sexist ideas, I can’t ignore his main point. 

            I have to say, I’m rather amused by some of what he says as well.  I find him a bit hypocritical.  He goes on and on about how his career doesn’t matter to him and how the success didn’t mean anything and it was all just part of a journey he had to take, but he didn’t care about the actual projects or the successes and failures.  Okay, that’s all well and good.  But, if that’s true and he’s so “above” it all, what’s with being so insulted that they made his Battlestar Galactica character a woman in the reboot tv show?  What’s with being insulted that his cameo was so short in The A-Team movie?  The fact that he bothered to comment on either of these things implies that he cares.  On some level, he cares. 

            And Then We Went Fishing improved my opinion of him as a person.  He showed some vulnerability and humility in it.  He wasn’t as preachy.  This book is a duel story about the birth of his first son and the death of his father.  I cannot imagine growing up with a father like Benedict’s father.  It does help me understand why he is the way he is, but his father seemed like a man who was not meant for family life.  I feel for Benedict and for his brother, his sister, and his mother.  I cannot imagine what they went through and I was tearing up by the end of it.  His father was shot by his brother after breaking into the family home one early morning.  He brought it on himself and Benedict says as much.  Still, I don’t know how a family recovers from something like that.

            The story of his son’s birth is far less depressing but it is quite suspenseful.  With all that goes on, you would swear he made the whole story up.  He and his wife wanted a home birth, given his feelings toward doctors, that makes sense.  Unfortunately, you can’t always get what you want.  And sometimes, you have no choice but to trust people other than yourself.  His wife (ex-wife) sounds like a remarkably strong individual.  She endured somewhere around 50 hours of drug free labor and she did it without complaining.  That’s more than I could handle.  The midwife and birthing attendants were frustrating because I got the sense that they weren’t taking things seriously.  Eventually, they had no choice and they went to the hospital.   Their son, named after Benedict’s father, was born a healthy baby.

            The juxtaposition of the two stories make for a very engaging read and it was very bittersweet.  He has a sort of poetic style of writing.  Sometimes, that’s frustrating because sometimes I just want the facts without getting all artsy about it.  Still, it was well written and, emotionally, it got to me.  In many ways, his kind of writing tells me more about him as a person than autobiographies that go through the writer’s life year by year.  It makes him stand out not necessarily because of what he went through, but because of how he reacted to his situations and how he chose to deal with them.  If you just want to read a viewpoint that doesn’t get a lot of attention, these books are worth reading.  If by chance, you are searching for a healthier way of living, these books are also worth reading.