Book Review: Alan Alda's "Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself"

At first blush a more accurate title for this book might have been "Commencement Speeches That I've Given Over the Past Thirty Years." Having been a popular speaker at university commencements and other events, Alda found himself with a drawer full of well-written advice that had been doled out over the past three decades which gave him a good starting point for a follow up to his popular "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed."

Like everyone else, I knew Alda as a wildly successful actor on TV, film and the stage. But in the process of reading "Things I Overhear While Talking to Myself", I learned two important things about him. First, he is an amazing speech writer and it is easy to see why he was in such demand. He threads personal experience, introspection, and world events into a motivating story that makes the grads listening want to rush out and improve the world. The second thing that I learned about Alda was that a few years ago (2003) he survived a near-death experience that forever changed his outlook on life. He doesn't look ahead wondering how to best spend his remaining days. Instead, he wonders how to best spend these bonus days. The difference is hardly subtle and everything he now writes is run through this filter.

Without this second part, the book would have been nothing more than a collection of well-written speeches. But after his near-death experience, Alda is on a mission to find ever-more meaning in his life and it's clear that simply publishing a book of speeches is not part of that plan. So he takes the speeches as a starting point and then weaves commentary about what he was thinking then versus what he knows now. This is compelling and Alda is uniquely positioned to pull it off. How many other people have written record of the advice that they were giving young people about what to do in the real world and then have the perspective that someone who nearly died has with which to reinterpret and re-prioritize what he wrote? The clear goal of the book is to motivate us to improve our lives but without having to first almost die.

One other aspect of the book worth noting are the anecdotes that pepper each section that include his experiences doing M*A*S*H, negotiating his first motion picture contract, dealings with agents and managers, and meeting Simon Wiesenthal, to list a few.

All-in-all, it's an interesting and quick read with more than a few passages that will make you stop and think about your own life, values and "bonus" days.

Amazon link: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself