Merle Haggard's My House of Memories by Merle HaggardMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have enjoyed Haggard’s songs for years. And I’ve read a number of Johnny Cash bios recently, so thought I would learn a bit about Haggard. I guess those Johnny Cash biographies led me to imagine Haggard’s life in the same way – overcoming a difficult early life, overcoming weaknesses like pills and women, and learning and becoming successful. At the end of the Cash books I’ve read, he stands larger than life, noble, wise. Haggard also overcame, somehow, early difficulties, but in the end the picture that remains is him nude and plastered on a houseboat, as he often describes. Haggard isn’t out to make himself a saint. In that he is quite successful in this book.
The stories here jump around quite a bit. There are a number of stories about his troubled youth and incarceration – that’s more than half the book. There’s a lot on his personal life, including some sordid bits which he writes about with relish. Given he writes story songs, you’d expect he’d tell a good story, and he does. I was hoping to learn more about his songs, but Haggard instead focuses this book on his personal life. Interesting, but in the end I felt less of Haggard than I expected. Not everyone becomes a saint.
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