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ME CHEETA: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Cheeta,James Lever | 352 pages | 05 Jun 2009 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9780007280162 | English | London, United Kingdom Me Cheeta: The Autobiography - James Lever - Google книги But how, I hear you asking, can a chimpanzee write a book? Easily, it seems. Take a look at this week's bestseller lists; at a guess, 70 per cent of the non-fiction titles are ghost-written. Did Cliff Richard ever snort cocaine off Constance Bennett's cleavage? I think not. Did Cheeta really do these things? Who cares? The point is that he could have done, and it makes for a grand story. Just don't go looking for innocent larks and family- friendly anecdotes; Cheeta is partial to four-letter words, and has come up with the bitchiest, most scurrilous chronicle of the Dream Factory since Kenneth Anger brought out Hollywood Babylon. The sheer starriness of the celebrities in walk-on roles makes your average autobiography look like the dribblings of a nonentity. How about Scott Fitzgerald, who sat next to our hero at a screening? Joan Crawford? Marlene Dietrich? Humphrey Bogart? There is great love there, and the autobiography is as much about Weissmuller as it is about Cheeta. The conceit of reading a book telling you what Hollywood was like as seen through the eyes of a chimp may be an odd one, but this was a treat from beginning to end. I'm so glad I had the chance to read it. Apr 11, Jazzy Lemon rated it it was amazing Shelves: magicalsquareadventures As much a biography of the life of Johnny Weissmuller and an insider's look into the escapades of several early film stars this is a charming, romp in the Hollywood life of Cheeta, the chimpanzee in the Tarzan films of the 30s. A very good read, highly recommended. Dec 24, Tracey rated it really liked it Shelves: auto-biography , This was something really different and I was not sure what to expect. What I did get was a book that was very funny, and also crude, lewd and rude. There are some descriptions of people that hit hard and hold nothing back which makes it entertaining and perhaps scandalous. Who ever created the idea for this book really hit pay dirt and I hope we are not treated to the lost diaries of Rin Tin Tin or Trigger's life with Roy. If you want something different to read then I highly recommend the book This was something really different and I was not sure what to expect. If you want something different to read then I highly recommend the book. I feel terrible for binning this. It's well written, it's witty, it's a great idea. But there is no narrative progression. I'm half way through and I do enjoy the wisecracking and the style and the made-up stories about david niven and all of the hollywood greats, but they're not real, and there's no reason to carry on. I probably shouldn't give it 3 stars, considering I'm n I feel terrible for binning this. Seven years after its original publication, the first French translation of Me, Cheeta has just been released by Le Nouvel Attila, whose founder has been exploring all kinds of genre literature for the past twenty years. I first heard about it on the French radio programme Mauvais Genres. Little is known about the author, said Francois Angelier, programme creator and presenter. Actually, Angelier added, rumour has Seven years after its original publication, the first French translation of Me, Cheeta has just been released by Le Nouvel Attila, whose founder has been exploring all kinds of genre literature for the past twenty years. Actually, Angelier added, rumour has it that James Lever might just be a pseudonym, that the actual author of Me, Cheeta might be Will Self. This got my attention. Not that I particularly like Will Self, mind you. But I was intrigued: what do you get by applying his undeniable talent to a topic like Tarzan? So I bought the book. A lot of the readers I know research a book and its author before reading it. I am under the illusion that this provides me with a more unblemished reading experience. Plus, I cannot resist the challenge: how much can I figure out about a writer based on his or her prose? I doubt it is from Will Self. The writing sounds very American, especially the way the metaphors are developed that passage p. I liked the blue button. The tone is however quite personal, constantly funny — with this also very American way of slipping comedy crumbs in the most tragic scenes, keeping the deep sadness but cutting the bitterness — and satirical as only the best satirists like Voltaire can do. Here you go. An interview from August 1st, for the Guardian by Zoe Williams reveals that not only does James Lever exist but also that she knows him from University, that he is British, lives in Kensal Rise, is — or was — broke and 37 at the time and had been unsuccessfully writing for the past 20 years. Me Cheeta was, however, a command from his publisher, who tied Lever to extremely strict deadlines. Most of his work effort was put in the research. The writing was done in one go and hardly corrected. This makes the result all the more impressive. It can also explain the school book quality of the structure 1. So far, Me, Cheeta is my book of the year Both have this marvellous combination of a flawless style precise, fast paced, fun, clever, well documented but never pedantic , a historical and cultural background to which I can relate. In both, the narrative point of view is, to say the least, unusual. The Nine Lives of Ray The Cat Jones is an punk-anarchist, first-person account of the life of a thief who had his hours of fame in the late 20th century. Ray Jones, the narrator, is the opposite of a self-interested criminal. Stealing, he said, is completely acceptable provided that what is taken is taken from people who will not miss it. This, you might say, is nothing but the old Robin Hood tale all over again. However, the novel illustrates it from the insider point of view, giving it an angle that only stories can find. Enabled with similar qualities, Me, Cheeta challenges what we usually see as an intellectual standpoint, more than a moral one: disbelief in humanity 2. The supposed simian author keeps hammering his love for the human race. This starts as a satiric joke. It ends up running throughout the whole novel. Always, new situations are interpreted with the same blissfully stupid adoring glance at human beings. However, as the theme finds its pattern, it twists. At the start of the novel, in the capture scene, Cheeta is running away from a scene of carnage. His mother and his favourite sister have just been killed. Cheeta drags in his wake his brother Cary and his other brother slash archenemy Stroheim. Stroheim catches up with him. Cheeta loses the ensuing fight. Cheeta takes his raptor for an ape. Gentry takes a fight to death for a game. Two short and funny sentences is all it takes to Lever to tell us this: the misunderstanding between chimp and human is total and mutual. Humans love animals. Animals love humans. Me, Cheeta could have been called Love and Misreading. It could have been a Jane Austin novel or a Hernandez comic. From there onwards, the theme of the misinterpretation is recurrent: hundreds of animals are captured and shipped back to the US aboard the cargo named Forest Lawn? This is part of a herculean task to rescue the whole animal kingdom from mutual murder. Animals are kept in closed cages? This is part of a rehabilitation programme where, with food and shelter provided, animals are allowed to laze around as long as it takes to bring down their stress level an awful lot of masturbation is involved at this stage. The seas are overfished? This is in order to make them safer. Through this distorted lens, the human world is reinvented as a Disney-esque theatre. At the centre of its stage, Johnny Weissmuller and Cheeta live the perfect love on a paradisiac set — which Cheeta calls The Dream and which we know as the setting of the early Tarzan movies. Walking us through all the dirty stories of Hollywood Golden Age, James Lever uses and develops this angle. As he does so, the way Cheeta has to lie to himself to preserve his fiction of a perfect world gets more obvious and the satire more subtle. With Jane entering the scene, things start getting ugly. Soon, we come to realise that Cheeta is no fool. As the chimpanzee stops believing in his own lies, we stop believing in his naivety. What was satire becomes irony. This slow reversal takes us all the way to the final pages. There might still be double meaning in these words. Does this sound like American blind-bliss optimistic self-patting auto-satisfaction to you? This is one way of seeing it. Another way is to do what I did after reading about James Lever and recognise this as an expression of what British people quintessentially are: paradox lovers, contradiction seekers, and goddamn animal huggers 4. Francois Angelier, usually so well documented, should have known better. I love you British people! I bought this book as a potential source of some light relief reading, thinking it might amuse me.

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