Brooks on Books: 39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss by Tom Davis

First, the good news about this memoir. I'm all about positivity, you know.

The good news is that Tom Davis, half of the comedy team of Franken and Davis and longtime writer and performer on "Saturday Night Live," has enough in the tank here to produce an entertaining read. I buzzed through it quickly, and despite his admittedly poor memory, he gives a reasonable amount of anecdotes from his career and adventures. I have issues with the book, for sure, but I can't deny that I had fun reading it and did so rapidly.

Now the bad news: If you're getting this hoping for insight into the early days of "Saturday Night Live," or even the post-Lorne-sabbatical "SNL," you will be disappointed. Even though Tom Davis was around for many of those years, even though he was a pivotal behind-the-scenes figure in addition to his on-camera roles, even though he palled around with Dan Aykroyd...
heck, even though the book is subtitled, 'The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There," and even though Aykroyd's blurb on the back says "...finally a book about SNL from someone who actually was there..."

this is NOT really an "SNL" book. It's shocking how sparse that material is, especially given what else is in here. There's a lot of stuff about the drugs Davis took in the seventies (and the eighties and the nineties...), and there's a whole chapter about Timothy Leary. Oh, and there's a wealth of information about the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia. Oh, MAN, is there a wealth of Dead stuff. It's frustrating reading so much about Garcia, who doesn't even come off as that great a guy, when you want "SNL" stories, or even comedy stories.

If you're willing to overlook that bait and switch, you still might be in for disappointment because the writing itself is a mess. There appears to be no editorial involvement, and the text jumps around with no clear order. Not only does Davis bounce randomly from chapter to chapter, but he includes bizarre, abrupt transitions within chapters, or pages, even. Some examples:

*After an account of a failed screenplay called "1985," on the top of the next page, we see, "Belushi's memorial was held at St. John the Divine..." This comes out of nowhere, as Belushi wasn't even being discussed.

*Davis offers a brief summary of sketches he contributed after returning to SNL in 1988, then suddenly: "I married Mimi Raleigh in 1991. She's a brilliant veterinarian." Then there's a mention of another sketch.

*He describes the making of the disastrous Franken-Davis movie "One More Saturday Night," but there's not even a line of white space before the next paragraph takes us to a quick anecdote about several months later, when a woman whose son's best friend was dying of cancer wants to meet Garcia. Lorne Michaels asks Davis about, but since Jerry was getting over a diabetic coma, he doesn't bother with him it. Bummer.

*The ultimate bizarre (non)seque comes after a description of a visit to Dachau, site of an infamous Nazi death camp. After a little white space, there's a story of how George Harrison visited the show in 1991 and entertained everyone around by playing piano and singing in the writers' room till Franken got ticked off and slammed his own door shut to demonstrate it. Davis writes, "That still makes me laugh just to think about it." Perhaps this jarring end to the chapter is making some kind of point about tragedy and comedy, but I think to believe that is to give the book too much credit.

Davis is a funny guy with some tales to share, but his autobiography comes up short. Despite its flaws and jarring lack of flow, a little more substance--as opposed to substance abuse-would make this a quality read. At one point, he describes telling a friend that his writing style for this book is based on understatement. Acknowledging it doesn't excuse it. He drifts through years of "SNL" after Lorne Michaels comes back to the show, rarely getting material on the air, but he shares little about the experience. At one late point, he mentions that almost every episode made someone on the writing staff unhappy because something of theirs didn't get on. You want him to elaborate on that and provide some more depth, but the point is abandoned.

My advice is to give this a through browsing in person before you buy it, and be forewarned that it's an amusing but frustrating memoir.