Audiobook9 hours
His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir
Written by Dan Jenkins
Narrated by Henry Strozier
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this audiobook
The colorful, sentimental, funny, affectionate, cantankerous memoir by the most colorful, funniest, most cantankerous-- and probably the most revered-- sportswriter of the last fifty years. Dan Jenkins is accepted as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) golf writer of all time, wrote beloved bestselling novels and abused more corporate expense accounts than anyone who ever lived. It's a touching, laugh-out-loud tribute to the romanticism of old-time sportswriting-- and the glory days of sports. As Dan Jenkins says in the first few pages of his memoir: "Sometimes, I envy my own childhood." A lot of us can say that about Dan's entire life. He grew up in the Great Depression, but he doesn't seem ever to have been depressed. He was too busy having fun and enjoying life. In His Ownself, we now get to share in the fun. Dan takes us back to his youth in Texas and his eccentric, wealthy mother-- with whom he never lived; he lived with his grandparents while his mother flitted in and out of his life-- and his sports fan father, whom he barely knew. We see Dan's growth as a sportswriter-- from his high school paper through to his first job at the Fort Worth Press-- and we understand what it was like to be a sports fan in Texas (it basically meant understanding a lot about passion, religion, heroes, and drinking). And then it's on to the glory days of Sports Illustrated, the most entertaining and most star-studded pages in the book. Dan was one of the handful of writers who made SI what it was for so many decades-- the most important sports magazine ever. Not coincidentally, Dan was also at the center of New York night life in those days-- hanging out at Elaine's while swapping stories with politicians and movie stars and New York's best writers and best bartenders. Above all, this is a sports nostalgia fan's dream book. And, in particular, a golfer's dream book. There are two chapters on Ben Hogan, whom Dan knew well-enough to play many rounds of golf with. There are up close and very personal looks at Byron Nelson, Palmer, Nicklaus, Tiger. Dan has covered every Masters and U.S. Open and British Open for the past 40+ years. He takes us behind the scenes of those tournaments to capture the drama, the humor and the absurdity of those events. This book is Dan Jenkins remembering, spewing and mouthing off about everything under the sun-- politics, hypocrites, political correctness, the past, the present, Hollywood, money, athletes-- and, of course, writing the way very few sportswriters have ever been able to write.
Author
Dan Jenkins
Dan Jenkins (1928–2019) was an author and sportswriter who wrote for Sports Illustrated. He was the author of more than twenty books, including Semi-Tough, Dead Solid Perfect, and Life Its Ownself.
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Reviews for His Ownself
Rating: 2.857142842857143 out of 5 stars
3/5
7 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I quick little memoir, from a very funny fiction writer, and one of the best golf and football sports writers ever.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dan Jenkins has been a sports journalist since he was in high school in the 1940s. During that period, he wrote for various Dallas/Fort Worth newspapers before relocating to New York City and gigs with Sports Illustrated, Playboy and Golf Digest. In addition to publishing articles for those magazines, he also penned several highly entertaining novels (including Semi-Tough, Dead Solid Perfect, Life Its Ownself, Fast Copy and Baja Oklahoma).His Ownself is largely a memoir, filled with entertaining anecdotes from his decades of covering golf, college and professional football and various other high profile sporting events. Jenkins came from a different generation of sports journalist that covered a different generation of athlete, often as not, the two sharing drinks and chasing women on the night before the big game.You can imagine, in Jenkins’s opinion, present day athletes don’t measure up against the likes of Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Bobby Layne, Sam Baugh and Doak Walker. Chief atop his list of mollycoddled, pampered, spoiled, modern athletes is Tiger Woods. Jenkins has waged a feud against Woods from his Golf Digest soapbox for many years now. Jenkins is the consummate curmudgeon, and admittedly so.I’ve read almost every Jenkins book to date and have found them to be very entertaining, easy reads, and this one is no exception. Seventy years of experience has given him plenty of material. If you have read and enjoyed his earlier work, you will not be disappointed.