Greenlights

Genre: Memoir

This is the story of actor, Matthew McConaughey's life. At fifty years old, he sat down with his many journals which contain poems, photographs, bumper stickers and deeply held beliefs (for instance, that life is filled with green lights, and that the yellow and red ones will eventually turn green) and put this book together. McConaughey openly writes of his family life with a mom and dad, who married and divorced more than once, and his two brothers. He writes of his high school experiences, what happened when he was in college, his exchange student experience and his early career experiences. He speaks of his father's early and unexpected death, how he met and married his wife, and the mother of his children, Camilla. McConaughey is a talented writer and poet and his perspective is interesting. This story of a life well-lived, will have you coming back for more, but at the end, it is just entertainment.

I dated this guy, Patrick, when I was in college. It was not a great relationship. Listening to this book reminded me of him a little. He didn't look or sound like McConaughey (he did look a little like Woody Harrelson, McConaughey's good friend) or certainly have any of his confidence. Patrick was an incredibly intelligent man, but being a part of a very large family that thrived on drama, he learned to mask his true pain regularly, mostly by smoking pot. He hung with the guys, worked with the boys, was a man's man who was loud and boisterous and lost his shit easily. But underneath it all, there was a torrent of feelings of inadequacies and pain and he worked so hard to suppress those that much of the good got lost in the mix too. While this book was enjoyable enough, and McConaughey has some really fun stories (I particularly like his description of his time in Australia as an exchange student) and his life lessons are applicable to anyone, my guess is that McConaughey has some big feelings inside, perhaps having to do with his upbringing and his relationship with his parents, that this felt very surface, very much a conversation he'd have at a bar with a bunch of his buddies. It feels like he held back a lot. This was an enjoyable enough read, but it definitely won't stay with me.