The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
By: Chris Gardner / Narrated By: Andre Blake
Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
Soooo torn about this one! Would you respect me less were I to be as indecisive as to neither Yay nor Boo it?!
I dunno what I was expecting when I went into The Pursuit of Happyness… well, actually, I wasn’t expecting much given I could only find an abridgment of what I fervently HOPED would be an awesome story. I mean, I didn’t see the movie, but I respect the actor Will Smith has grown into and dude! a rags/homeless to riches/Wall Street story? AWESOME, yes?
Certainly author Chris Gardner would have oodles to tell us about what really matters in Life!
Uhm, ‘twould appear that Money is what it’s all about.
I TOTALLY appreciate and applaud how much he went through as a child, and esPECially as he desperately and devotedly wanted/tried to be the father he never had as a child. And indeed he was most certainly that. It’s just that, well, gosh, the reason he had the child in the first place was because he cheated on his lovely and faithful wife (It’s like this, see: He joined the Navy as a young man cuz he was promised to see the world and to experience hot babes in each locale… but alas! he was stuck stateside. Soooo, he always felt cheated by that, so when this hot chick makes goo-goo eyes at him, what’s a man to do but grab “her a**”? Which of COURSE leads to cheating cuz his wife is good and proper, and he’s bored with her but won’t tell her he wants garter belts and stockings, a bit of kink… See? It’s aaaaaalllll perfectly natural!). And NATURALLY whilst with this other woman, who’s quite the immature wench (But dude! the Kink Factor!), he doesn’t use protection, sooo…
Anyhoo! I’m starting Boo, am I not? Hmmm….
Onto how he’s decided that, after being a stellar medical researcher, he realizes he doesn’t want a career in medicine, and current wench (Not the wonderful woman he left) constantly snipes at him to Make More Money. He’s all onboard with THAT, and so it goes as he tries Sales, then sees a guy in a super duper pricey car and discovers he absoLUTEly wants that life. Unfortunately, wench wigs out and dumps his kid on his lap and leaves him.
Thus onto the Uber rags part of the story. He ain’t making commissions, he’s losing jobs, he’s living at HO-tels where the hookers LOVE little Christopher Jr. and give him money which dad pockets gratefully. But Gardner is relentless and persevering in his pursuits, true to Being There for his son, even when that means sleeping in bathrooms at the BART stations of San Francisco.
He catches breaks, even tho’ they come at the great expense of debasing himself, but hey! who the heck am I to say when a person is s’posed to feel slighted, and I dunno if it’s the abridgment or the flow of the story, but it’s precious little that’s said about homelessness, and a great deal about the shaking and baking done at brokerage firms. There’s a bit, when Gardner finally catches the best break of all and lands doable rent for a home, and little Christopher panics and tells his father: What are we doing? We can’t leave without all our clothes and the duffle bag! We GOTTA take ALL our stuff! Gardner takes huge delight in reassuring Christopher by showing him The Key to Their HOME. With that, a befuddled Christopher settles down, but he can’t believe they’re not going to be sleeping in the park or in a bathroom again.
The story starts with Gardner’s childhood where he was passed from relative to relative because his mother’s most current boyfriend sends her to jail repeatedly tho’ he’s the one who’s doing some gosh almighty violence unto her. And Gardner even tells of his rape by one of the men who robbed him of all HE’S robbed from one of his forays into Breaking and Entering. He gets the man back by crushing his skull with a brick when he sees him later, and that’s pretty much it for that particular trauma. The trauma that he’s dealt from the hands and words of Mom’s boyfriend? That goes on for great detail, along with a total and abiding love for her. Even tho’ Mom keeps choosing the man over her own children? I find it despicable…
But hey! who’m I to say when a person should feel slighted and like perhaps a bit of anger?
Anyhoo AGAIN! And AGAIN, I’m starting to feel a whole lot more Boo.
As Gardner makes more and more money money money, his One Truth that he relays to all those listening to this tale of devotion is: There’s no such thing as Black. No such thing as White. There’s ONLY GREEN.
Oh, and obviously sex. Cuz when he briefly sees wench again, NATurally they have unprotected sex again, cuz dude! the Kink Factor, what’s a man to do?! and he soon has a daughter.
I applaud that he was able to do some good with all the money and influence, and huzzah to him for getting a meeting with Nelson Mandela, but Good COW! The choices, the lack of dignity, the complete and UTTER (Or perhaps Udder since I’m having a cow now?! Ha! but I digress…) elevation of the Pursuit of MONEY. If that has indeed brought him “Happyness” well,
Who the heck am I to say what brings a person joy? It’s just that, dude!
I’m suddenly feeling a whole HELLuva a lot of Boooooo right about now!
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