Newman at his best ... The end product...is twice the book one could have dared to hope for, a narrative that is astute, introspective and surprisingly graceful ... When we meet our heroes on the page, we want them to have something thoughtful to say—to make good on the admiration their outsize performances have won. Newman always seemed likely to pass that test, with his self-aware persona, storied marriage and generous charitable activities. Still, to see it come true in this rich book somehow imbues his characters’ pain and joy with fresh technicolor.
An odd duck of a book — welcome, but odd ... Is The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man merely a supplement to The Last Movie Stars? For readers who have watched the series, the book can’t help but suffer in comparison for not being able to include glorious clip after glorious clip of Newman in action across his lengthy filmography ... The memoir is necessarily incomplete, even speculative—a found object of sorts that has been carefully shaded and massaged into a facsimile of what Newman might have intended if he hadn’t turned his back on the whole thing. However grateful one is to have it—and it’s not pretending to be a smoothly polished work—it’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster ... Don’t let that scare you: there is much to cherish here. The book is in Newman’s voice, with occasional interjections from the interviews with Woodward and others. It’s a familiar voice: genial but shrewd, self-deprecating but resolute ... Emotionally cohesive and moving ... Some passages, such as Newman’s account of his mother’s smothering but narcissistic love, have the quality of revelation turned rote ... Don’t let that scare you, either. Some tidbits of decent gossip have managed to lodge between these covers.
The show is a lot more satisfying than the book ... The auto-da-fé at the town dump seems a pretty clear indication that Newman did not want a memoir. But now he has one. And he obviously had no say about what got put into it ... Even though the memoir was put together by friends and family, it has a slightly diminishing effect ... Newman was self-deprecating, well past the point of modesty. He was self-deprecating about his self-deprecation. It can grow a little monotonous ... There’s got to be more to Paul Newman than this. It seems that most people who knew Newman thought that there was. In the memoir, the juxtaposition of their testimonies with Newman’s self-analysis produces a sort of cognitive dissonance.
Relatively slender in girth, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is perhaps the least mediated and most conflicted part of the whole renaissance because it bears within it all the riven emotions its subject might be expected to feel at its release ... As narrator, he performs his expected due diligence.
I have to admit, I read Paul Newman’s autobiography...with a sinking heart, partly because I had a feeling that what I was reading wasn’t the book Newman had in mind when, over a five-year period, he and his screenwriter friend Stewart Stern recorded many hours of conversations about Paul’s life. Nor, I feared, was it the book that David Rosenthal envisioned ... Newman’s insistence on fierce honesty does not always align with what appears to be the mission of his daughters, at least two of whom were involved in the publication of this book. On the one hand, the goal seems to be to dispel the fairy-tale version of their parents’ marriage favored by the press, but they seem equally determined not to sully the memory of the father they loved ... Even if some of the more salacious material in the Stern transcripts has been diluted, Newman’s voice comes through loud and clear, offering a first-person glimpse into the heart and mind of a man we imagined we knew. The book provides compelling evidence we didn’t.
Stunning ... A brutally frank reflection on a life filed with self-doubt ... Lacks the keen look at filmmaking that usually punctuates a movie star’s story. While a bumpy, disjointed confessional, it also smolders with introspection as Newman tries to ascertain what he couldn’t see in himself that so many others did.
... far more than a celebrity biopic. Newman’s narrative dominates, but commentary and anecdotes from his co-writer and friend Stewart Stern, other luminaries of the movie business, friends and Newman’s own family make this loosely chronological treatment of the legendary film star unusually compelling ... Through such details, Newman and the hive mind that spawned this memoir bring an icon down to earth without clipping his wings.
Movie stars, bemused by their own magnified faces, don’t usually have much interest in self-analysis. Paul Newman turns out to be the ruthlessly candid exception ... The result is startling: Narcissus breaks the mirror, leaving only some cruelly jagged shards ... Two of Newman’s daughters, contributing a foreword and afterword, claim that after recording the tapes he became 'more present' in his remaining years. That’s good to hear, but it’s easy to see why he decided back then not to publish the agonised testimony. Praising Newman’s performance as a fearful, drink-bleared lawyer in The Verdict, Robert Altman remarked that 'he shows you his pink places'. This book turns him inside out all over again: bravely outfacing pain, it resembles a self-administered colonoscopy.
Reflective ... Readers will want to savor the stories in this oral history-turned-autobiography and undoubtedly be motivated to watch or rewatch Newman’s many films.
Sharp, acerbic, often somber ... Fans looking for Hollywood gossip will not find it, while those who really want to know the man behind the image and the legend will be compelled by Newman’s raw, open, and principled self-portrait.
This unforgettable and extraordinary memoir, one of the best and most compelling books of 2022, is a breathtakingly honest mea culpa from a complicated man striving to excavate his demons; according to Newman's daughter Clea, who writes the memoir's afterword, he succeeded in his final decades.
In many ways this memoir is incomplete, but it’s never not psychologically fascinating — a compelling insight into how profoundly right Philip Larkin was about the power of bad parents.
Newman’s story unfolds in a humble, sometimes humorous narrative voice ... These collective perspectives do more than offer a prismatic view of film industry glamour and dirty laundry: they elevate the book from a humble autobiography to a more nuanced, human portrait...that Newman craved when he went on the record. With equal parts grounded authenticity and inviting charm, this candid memoir captures the life of a legend.
