Praise for The Rainman's Third Curve:
"Peter's Coyote's new memoir is just plain wonderful--richly textured, beautifully written, sad, sweet, sometimes funny, always wise. It is about childhood losses and joy, growing up, mentors, loyalty, the search for Truth, survival, the sixties, the seventies, transcendence, healing, disasters. It is told by a writer of deep wisdom, self-knowledge and charm, yet I gobbled it up, like a novel.” —Anne Lamott
"As he showed in Sleeping Where I Fell, Peter has lived a life most of us could only dream of. In this insightful and beautifully expressed follow-up, we get a deeper view not only of his own path, but of the currents underlying so much of our own shared histories. Viewed through this prism of three transformational relationships, his story is as moving as it is fascinating. A remarkable book." —Bonnie Raitt
Praise for Sleeping Where I Fall
“Sleeping Where I Fall Chronicles with uncommon honesty a chaotic social movement that aimed to radically reform American society . . . the tales that make the final cut in Coyotes memoir are skillfully rendered, mixing hilarity and tragedy.” –The Los Angeles Times
“Coyote reflects with maturity on the mistakes he and his peers made, but he affirms that the dream was worth having.” –Washington Post
“Coyote not only survived the excesses of the Sixties and Seventies but emerged from years of journeying through the counterculture to achieve success as an actor. Considering the numerous casualties among radicals, who, like Coyote, were heroin junkies living on the edge of society, this is a rare feat. In this frank yet sensitive memoir of those years, Coyote contradicts romantic notions of communes by recalling the discord and petty disagreements typical in his own communal living experiences . . Coyote's thoughtful, articulate writing displays a compassionate wisdom that puts this chronicle in a class above the typical actor's autobiography. Highly recommended for relevent subject collections in academic as well as public libraries.” –Library Journal
“Coyote's evolution from callow thespian to revolutionary communard to seasoned philosopher is fascinating, as much a social and political history as it is a reminiscence. The stories unravel like tender after-dinner tales in prose that captures the rasp and tickle of Coyote's corduroy voice. In the end, Sleeping Where I Fall reveals a man as complex and unpredictable as the totem animal from which he takes his name.” --L.A. Smith
★ 06/01/2015
Best known now as an actor, voice-over artist, and documentary film narrator, Coyote (Sleeping Where I Fall) has lived a varied life. In the 1960s, he rejected his wealthy background by becoming a founding member of the Diggers, an anarchist theater group based in San Francisco, whose basic tenet states that everything should be free. This book, Coyote's second, focuses specifically on his upbringing and his discovery of Zen Buddhism. His early life, while unpleasant, seems to have taught him to be self-sufficient. Coyote's father was domineering, distant, and at times abusive, while his mother suffered a nervous breakdown, from which she never seemed to recover, early in the author's life. Zen helped Coyote rediscover value in his life, after years of drug abuse and living in dirty and impoverished conditions. He honestly describes his initiation into spiritual thought and practice, not making it sound either easy, nor entirely pleasant. In particular, he explains how his mind struggles with the formality of Zen. Having experienced such an undisciplined and unstructured life up until his early to mid-30s, Coyote learns to see the benefit in rules over time. VERDICT Remarkably forthright and insightful, this memoir may inspire others to add a bit of Zen to their lives. [See Memoir, 3/12/15; ow.ly/MBDBz/.]—Derek Sanderson (DS)
2015-01-21
An imperious and flawed father figure looms large in Coyote's artfully rendered chronicle of his intriguing journey from confused, privileged youth to enlightened Zen practitioner.Not long ago, Coyote, international screen star and veteran countercultural revolutionary, had a transcendental experience that he had arguably been searching for his entire life. But while the author's Buddhist practice is a vital component of his often descriptively brilliant biographical odyssey, it is by no means the only one. Coyote's story, the follow-up to Sleeping Where I Fall (1998), is as much about a boy's initial introduction to the great wide world as it is about one complex human being's lifelong hunger for inner meaning. Coyote presents a fascinatingly intricate portrait of what it was like being the peculiar scion of wealth and power. As a child, the young Peter Cohon found himself languishing in neglect, floating in the staid world of his conflicted parents, Morris and Ruth. Soon, however, he was propelled headlong into a parallel existence where he met lively figures hired to run the family's Turkey Hill farm and Englewood, New Jersey, abode. "For the next ten years [caretaker] Susie Howard was the North Star around which my heavens revolved." The impressionable young boy eventually encountered jazz legends, intellectual radicals and rough-hewn outdoorsmen. In addition to an imposing gangster uncle, each of these individuals managed to shape the boy who would later become not only a central figure in America's nascent youth movement, but also a dusty pioneer in communal living, a left-wing rabble-rouser working inside the political system, and a struggling father trying to support a family with a heroin monkey on his back. Astonishingly, well into middle age, the author accomplished another remarkable turn, evolving into the well-respected film actor many know him as today. Presented with so many well-defined faces, there's guaranteed to be at least one Coyote, and probably more, that readers enjoy meeting.
