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The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man cover art

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

By: Paul Newman
Narrated by: Jeff Daniels, Ari Fliakos, January LaVoy, Melissa Newman, Clea Newman Soderlund, John Rubinstein, Emily Wachtel
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon.

In 1986, Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, began an extraordinary project. Stuart was to compile an oral history, to have Newman's family and friends and those who worked closely with him, talk about the actor's life. And then Newman would work with Stewart and give his side of the story. The only stipulation was that anyone who spoke on the record had to be completely honest. That same stipulation applied to Newman himself. The project lasted five years.

The result is an extraordinary memoir, culled from thousands of pages of transcripts. The book is insightful, revealing, surprising. Newman's voice is powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always meeting that high standard of searing honesty. The additional voices—from childhood friends and Navy buddies, from family members and film and theater collaborators such as Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill, Martin Ritt, and John Huston—that run throughout add richness and color and context to the story Newman is telling.

Newman's often traumatic childhood is brilliantly detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Brando and Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward—their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is revelatory and introspective, personal and analytical, loving and tender in some places, always complex and profound.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Paul Newman (P)2022 Penguin Audio

What listeners say about The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

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Fascinating insight into a great actor!

As Paul Newman notes in the book, most people only see the actor and rarely understand the person. This book, well read by different people for different contributors, as well as the wonderful voice of the main narrator, takes you through Paul Newman’s personal and professional life to provide a fascinating insight. His life was both incredibly sad and incredibly wonderful. It's not a long listen and well worth the time.

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5 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars

Not nearly as profund as it pretends to be

Oh dear, I wanted to like this book for honesty and integrity but I found it heavy going.

Firstly, I think very few people get a pass in life. Most have their strained family dynamics at some time and you can either work around it or make your life different. I think if you are still struggling with it 50 years later I think the problems centre around you and your life’s choices. When you do a biography or memoir and publish it, the members of your family long since dead have no right of reply. His mother’s character will have been shaped by events, insecurities and life in Slovakia beyond his knowledge or even curiosity it seemed, yet she was served up like a verbal punch bag.

In his own words he was brought up in a financially secure household during a time of lean years for swathes of the country. He had food on the table, his mother cleaned and washed after him and he went to school, got jobs, earned money and even had his mother drive him to some of his jobs. All forms of love which are untrumpeted and usually taken for granted. These opening chapters rather set the tone and left me resenting Newman. I simply don’t believe it stopped him from being a more engaging parent. I believe that was on him.

One last note, if you are constantly repeating the word ‘I’, even in a memoir, the book is seriously in need of a good edit. Its pace was slow and whilst Jeff Daniels is a good actor, he's an almost funereal narrator.

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2 people found this helpful

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Excellent book and narration

15 words are required for the review. I'll just say that the book is deep and you should listen to it.

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The man behind the actor

This was an interesting listen and it was good to know more about PNs life including his early life. The sense that people expected him to ‘be’ the parts he played was strong. The sense that his extraordinary good looks were actually quite a burden to him - but nonetheless the key to getting him noticed was also a repeating theme.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Honest, Flawed & Complicated

Newman was such an interesting individual with layers of complexity. The audio narrators did a superb job of bringing this story to life.

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  • 10-10-23

The inner life of the great man

I enjoyed this immensely. You will too. Paul Newman was greta and he was human.

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The Title Says it All

I definitely didn’t know enough about Paul Newman before I listened to this and am really glad that I took the time to listen and find out more. What a complex and interesting life he led.

And Jeff Daniels was a great choice to put voice to him as well.

Well worth a listen.

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Paul Newman.

He wasn’t an ordinary man, he was an extraordinary man. I listened enthralled from beginning to end.

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"Fairness in all things."

This was not as I expected, not the usual story of a life of success and his journey through the film world. His outstanding acting career is mentioned (as having been achieved mostly by sheer luck and 'that trust fund appearance' ) but only very lightly skimmed. Instead it is by and about the private man himself, his parents, his guilt over his betrayal of his first wife, Jackie, when conducting a long term affair with Joanne Woodward who was to become his wife of over half a century, his personally perceived failure towards his children, his drinking, and other aspects of his inner life.
The book was assembled by his daughters from drafts of five years of recorded interviews, started in 1986, with old friend and scriptwriter, Stewart Stern. Others could contribute but with one stipulation: absolute honesty over everything. Paul Newman still had over fifteen more years of life to live after these interviews were concluded, his racing car years and his philanthropic work part funded by his salad dressing company. His personal best years, some might say.
There is no glossy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid about this book. This is the aloneness of the man inside the actor looking back on his life, a life pursued to feed and clothe his family. This retroactive record was made for his close ones, not, I suspect, for those who did not know him: it is too intimate for outsiders.

A P.D.F. accompanies this audible, 42 pages of photos of Paul Newman and his family.
Newman himself is nicely read by Jeff Daniels.
This moving, unexpected book is an amazing read. Not so much for avid Newman film fans, perhaps, even, best avoided. Having said that, I have been such a fan for several decades and am very glad to have read this book

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Reveals an unexpectedly philosophical attitude.

In 1986, together with close friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern, Paul Newman began to tape an oral history. His aim was to provide a biographical record, including comments from family members, friends, actors and movie directors. The idea focused on everyone being entirely truthful – a no-hold-barred account of his life from childhood to the early nineties. Though Newman is said to have destroyed the tapes later, the memoir was eventually committed to print.

Having been a fan of Paul Newman since I saw ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ in the nineteen seventies, I was keen to hear this apparently accurate account of the actor’s life. From a troubled childhood and a difficult relationship with his mother, Newman recalls details of his acting career, moviemaking and relationships with family and friends. The book contains comments by, among others, Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill and Joanne Woodward, giving their own take on different aspects of the man’s life. While Newman’s intent was to, supposedly, reflect the truth of his life, he manages to avoid all but the slightest hint of his womanising ways. His apparent 18-month affair with journalist Nancy Bacon during the filming of Butch Cassidy, for instance, or his affair with actress Shelley Winters are never mentioned.

Nevertheless, this is a fascinating account which reveals an unexpectedly philosophical attitude, as Newman endeavours to understand the decisions he’s made, the things he’s done and the path he chose in life.

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