Book Review: The Pursuit of Happyness

Non-fiction/Autobiography                                                                  

The Pursuit of Happyness

Chris Gardner

Amistad

2006

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-074487-8

302 pages

I did this backwards: Usually when a movie adapted from a book is released, I make a point of reading the book first. This time I didn’t. I read about The Pursuit of Happyness in a magazine whose title I don’t recall, during the summer of 2006. The concept of a black single father struggling to raise his young son while pursuing career goals was intriguing. I made a mental note to get the book. In the fall, I heard the movie, starring Will Smith and his son, was being released in December. I still had not read the book, but since I’d heard so many good things about the film, I decided to see it for myself.  I would get to the book.  The movie impressed me. I left the theater high off of the inspiration that oozed from nearly every scene.

Then I read the book. And now that I have, I feel disappointed and somewhat mislead by the film because the book took me to places that are real and familiar, while the film gave me the glorified version. In the book, Chris Gardner’s story begins with his mother. Bettye Jean Gardner was a smart, beautiful woman who ran from her Louisiana home when her father reneged on a promise to pay for her college education. She had one child when she left, a daughter, and became pregnant with Chris in route to Milwaukee by a married man with—it turns out—a litter of children he didn’t take care of or know. In Milwaukee, Bettye Jean’s poor luck with men gained her one Freddie Triplett. Bettye Jean married Triplett and had two children with him. He severely abused Bettye Jean and her children emotionally and physically and was responsible for sending her to prison on two occasions.

Milwaukee is where the framework of Chris Gardner’s formidable character is constructed. Poverty, a frequently absent mother, and a violent, mentally ill step-father whose on-going taunt, “I ain’t your goddamn daddy,” intertwine with a lust for books, a deep love for his mother, sisters, and extended family to lay the foundation for a drive that eventually leads to the formation of a multi-million dollar brokerage firm. In the movie, Chris is driven by the need for money, love for his son, and lust for a beautiful red Ferrari. Ultimately, the motivators are the same in the book, but the deeply set roots are exposed.

As a young adult, Chris evolves from a Navy medic stationed in Jacksonville, NC to a non-degreed research assistant in San Francisco, California training medical students in matters of the heart. He is successful in his work, but his salary is miniscule. Chris dreams of attending medical school. However, his ever present loneliness incites an impromptu marriage proposal to an old girlfriend from home. What follows, and what the movie leaves out, is a marriage that ends due to Gardner’s sexual discontent and subsequent infatuation with the woman who is responsible for his single parenthood status.

As I continued to read the literary account of what became of this passionate and determined man, movie scenes flashed in my head and I had to remind myself that Hollywood is about fantasy and so the depiction of Gardner running, constantly, across the hilly San Francisco terrain and being hit with problem after problem without the slightest crumbling was appropriate for that medium. It worked. The book—with clear, real world descriptions of living that most people can easily relate to—worked even better.  The message that flows from the pages is shared in simple, plain language with an openness that can only come when skeletons have been pulled out of the closet, dusted off, polished, and hung up for a private viewing.

While leaving an appointment for the medical supply sales job he was holding, Gardner spots a red Ferrari and barters his parking space for information: “What do you do? How do you do it?” The result of this meeting is a position in the Dean Witter training program and he is off from there. Gardner’s journey to stockbroker and eventually entrepreneur was not quite as dramatic as his movie double’s: He’d nabbed the internship (which was paid) before his son’s mother turned their toddler over to him with a perfunctory, “Here.”

There is nothing magical or supernatural about this man’s life. He is simply a person who made a promise to himself—to be a part of the lives of any children he brings into the world—and he kept it. Gardner used his bruised background to discover the lesson that brought him to the front door of happiness (the misspelling in the title comes from the sign at his son’s daycare during the lean years); the one truth that divides those who make it from those who don’t: If you stop trying you will fail. Chris never stopped trying.

In print, The Pursuit of Happyness shows what we all can accomplish if we hold on to our will even when everything in life grabs onto our legs and pulls.

Reviewed by

M. B. Levine

For Black Starhttp://www.students.emory.edu/blackstar/  

Copyright 2007  M. B. Levine

Reviewer for IP Book Reviewers www.bookreviewers.org

Blog: Woman Free, A Novel http://womanfreeanovel.blogspot.com