The weakest parts of Searching for John Hughes occur when he belabors that conceit — Diamond works like hell to fit his own narrative into this Hughesian framework, and sometimes it's a stretch ... But this memoir is satisfying in a way that a Hughes film never could be, and the author's story will be achingly familiar to anyone who relied on Hollywood for a respite from reality but who came away disappointed ... while Searching for John Hughes isn't exactly the book he originally set out to write, it's clearly the book he was meant to write.
Do readers really need another memoir about a moody bearded man who moves to New York, drinks too much and barely scrapes by? Does running a car in reverse take mileage off a car? Even so, an overcrowded genre can make a little room for Mr. Diamond’s touchingly funny work ... it avoids all the pitfalls of the Very Serious Literary Memoir. Mr. Diamond pokes fun at himself ... While readers may walk away feeling like little has been revealed about the filmmaker’s life, the dozens of poignant tidbits in Searching for John Hughes shine brightly.
Diamond never gets far enough into his John Hughes obsession to explain it, or why his alienation doesn’t express itself in angrier pop-cultural form ... I’m not sure Diamond gets enough about Hughes into the book — for long swaths, the title rings literally true — but he has successfully negotiated the writer’s most important rite of passage: He makes himself matter, first to himself and then to us.
In zippy, relatable prose, full of fervently realized memories and antics straight out of a rom-com, Diamond details the next five years as he attempts to write, perfects his latte art, and tries obsessively to find John Hughes ... His family life leaves much to be desired, and the actual events are fairly horrifying: so it’s a wonder that Searching for John Hughes doesn’t read as horrifying...it doesn’t feel maudlin or melodramatic?—?perhaps because in those moments, he’s actively receding into his fantasy world, and he allows the reader to, also.
The result is mixed, as Diamond combines incautious candor and self-pity in his arduous decade-long adventure ... Searching For John Hughes’ strength lies in Diamond’s intensely personal references to Hughes’ body of work and his light cultural criticism of the films. Moreover, Diamond’s reflections on both suburbia—the way it both castigates and liberates—and Hughes are thoughtful and considered ... Diamond’s tragicomic memoir attempts to offer readers some important life lessons, but falls short with its self-pity and solipsism.
It’s an enjoyable read for the most part, but also not without its flaws. I got increasingly frustrated at the several near misses with meeting Hughes and the many moments where Diamond backed out of talking to people with real ties to the filmmaker. In the end, though, Diamond comes off as a likeable guy you hope succeeds. Searching for John Hughes is a book not only for fans of Hughes’ movies and 1980s pop culture, but also for any creator out there looking for hope and inspiration.
