A Book A Week - Week 46: Undisputed Truth

This week's book:
  Undisputed Truth    by Mike Tyson  with Larry Sloman

Grade:  A-

 This one is two days late, but not because I couldn't make up my mind.  I just started two days later than usual.

I don't think the final chapter on Mike Tyson has been written.  Not even with this book.  He is still a troubled mix of contradictions, but come to find out, he realizes this.  He's even cool with it.  Mostly.

This book is written with a ghost writer.  I say 'with' a ghost writer instead of 'by' because it reads to me like a very long, extended interview.  These are indeed Mike Tyson's words, just organized and edited.

The book begins with a prologue explaining how he did not rape the woman he was convicted of raping, and how even though he hated the process and the judicial system and the boxing organizations that put him in the position to stand accused of rape, he thinks the judge who put him away probably saved his life.
   Then, in the very next chapter he outlines how horrific, abusive, and neglected his childhood was.  How he didn't learn right from wrong, how he idolized criminals because those were the people who were making it in his neighborhood.  How he became a criminal himself to escape bullying at school, and how he grew bolder and bolder with every criminal exploit he got away with.  The bullied kid became the bully.

He doesn't see the contradiction.  Or the irony.  He outlines how he was - his words - 'an animal' and yet claims to have risen above that animal nature, at least in the one instance he was caught and convicted of a crime.  Not only does he not see the contradiction, it's not a contradiction in his mind.  He didn't rape that woman.  He did lie and cheat and steal and do drugs and conceive illegitimate children.  But the one crime he was convicted for he did not do.

This was a fascinating read.  Not the least reason of which is the sociological study of the effect of inner city destitution on children.  Mike Tyson's mother was a prostitute.  And he shared her bed until he was fifteen.  He grew up around thieves and pimps and drug dealers, only to become a thief and drug dealer himself, who victimized women.  In the question of nature vs. nurture, nurture won out. At least early on.

Mike Tyson was a victim for much of his life, even well after his boxing career was over.  He knows this, he says as much.  But he has in recent years risen above it.  Or gone beyond it, perhaps, he does take care to note his constant struggle not to revert to the insecure egomaniac he once was.

This isn't really a feel-good book.  You come away from it realizing that Mike Tyson is much more than his public persona once might have led you to believe.  But you also realize that he was, at one time, much less than that too.  And he's still teetering in between.  Could go either way.  He says in the book he's such an egomaniac he'd need to die in front of a crowd.  That still might happen.  But I hope it doesn't.

Read this book.  It is a genuine glimpse into the mind of a man more fascinating than you might think. 

Next week:
  Heart of Darkness   by Joseph Conrad
Yeah, I should have read this in high school.  I may have given it a try, but 'Apocalypse Now' was on VHS, why would I have wanted to read a book?  Plus, it's short, I can get it in by Sunday and get back on track.