Me Cheeta

This is my first review of a book from the Booker longlist since its announcement (links to the ones I read before their nomination can be found here) and when I embarked on reading it in full. Let me preface this post by saying that I will review each and every longlisted title that I manage to read. Reading the longlist is already opening me up to some books that I may not have read otherwise and overall I am hoping that it will be a rewarding and enriching experience. By writing down my thoughts on all the nominees I think it will make easier for me to objectively choose the title that I would like to win as well as potentially encouraging others, who aren't reading the longlist themselves, to pick up a title that they normally wouldn't read.

Me Cheeta : The Autobiography by James Lever is the inclusion on the list that surprised most people; some saw it as a novelty, others a travesty, and I saw it as an opportunity (although the cynic in me wonders if it was merely a token gesture). The fictional autobiography of Cheeta the chimpanzee, companion of Tarzan on the silver-screen, Me Cheeta (an allusion to Tarzan's catch-phrase) is a satire of the golden-age of Hollywood. I laughed out-loud from the spoof-memoir's "Note to the Reader" and for the majority of the first section when Cheeta is liberated from the African jungle and "rehabilitated" in the jungle that is Hollywood.

If you're a star, Hollywood is a playground, and if you're not, they're right, it is a jungle. It's a town of heartless bottom-lines and harsh decisions and betrayals so ugly that from time the very earth beneath it shudders in contempt, like its teeth have been set on edge.

However, the novelty wore off some and although I still found it amusing in parts and overall I enjoyed it, I did feel it was dry in places.

The concept is incredibly clever; Me Cheeta reads like a real memoir and Cheeta is a fabulous (and most importantly, a believable) narrator but I wasn't fully engaged in Thirties and Forties Hollywood, despite a few cameos from more alluring stars and a definite sense of the period. In my opinion the first half is stronger than the second but perhaps that is because it concerns a more amusing and happier time, when Cheeta was at the height of his career, but the sadness of the memories of a has-been star in the latter half is less humorous. Its strength certainly seems to be in its complete credibility as a memoir, down to its photographs, filmography and index. I greatly admire its achievement and its wit; Cheeta's perception of the human world is that of a primate as a guest in it and misunderstandings and confusion ensue:

I overheard William Powell tell Jane Russell that 'The two inevitable things in life, as Mark Twain had it, are death and taxis'. Taxis, sure: wherever there are humans there'll be cars, there's no doubting that. And those cars will doubtless always include taxis. But death?

The language is quite colourful at times and the content a little lewd, probably the sections that I found hilarious are the ones that make them cringe.

Cheeta interacts with the implied reader frequently providing it with more of an authentic feel (yes, there were even times that I could easily suspend my disbelief and believe I was being addressed by a chimpanzee). He informs, shows, tells and instructs:

In fact, unless I specifically inform you otherwise, every single action performed by an adult human male in this memoir can be thought of as an attempt to attract the attention of some sexually receptive females.

It is all very tongue-in-cheek and refreshing. Did it change my life? No. Do I think it will win the Booker? No, but chimpanzees might fly.

Next I expect a sequel to this attempt with the autobiography of Bubbles, the chimpanzee who lived with Michael Jackson in Neverland.