The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir

by Paul Newman

My mother was oblivious to the damage being done. Her need to bestow affection not only overwhelmed the object she bestowed affection upon, but had nothing to do with that object.

I’ve come to realize I have some kind of disability that makes it difficult for me to listen, to hear people, to read faster than I can speak, even to memorize. Whatever the reasons, I never did anything academic with distinction, never gave my father anything to be proud of.

Paul has told me he so often feels anesthetized that he blacks out most of his childhood, doesn’t remember most of it. What he’s been looking for is the answer to the riddle of his being—why he has so much distance from his own emotions that, until recently, he could feel very, very little. A little sad, a little happy—but could never allow himself to feel all the way with either.

I wasn’t naturally anything. I wasn’t a lover. I wasn’t an athlete. I wasn’t a student. I wasn’t a leader. I measured things by what I wasn’t, not by anything I was. I felt that there was something lacking in me that I couldn’t bridge, didn’t know much about and couldn’t fathom.

I’ve always wondered that I was never able to find a mentor. I never had anyone in my childhood I can look back on as an adult and say, “Boy, I never realized what a foundation that was, how I leaned on that.” I did get little bits of morality from my father; I don’t know what I got from my mother. I don’t know that any teachers gave me anything or any understanding of myself. No scout leader or camp person. Nobody in a church. Nothing. As far as I can tell, I got no emotional support from anyone.

For all the hard work and joy of immersion that came at Yale, my time there was a kind of purgatory, just a resting place. I see that period in my life as the beginning of a great failure: failure to provide relief for Jackie at the home she lived in, failure as a husband, a lover, as an actor, as a father. I don’t deny anything. I’m not trying to allay anything. I do, though, have a predisposition to look at the negative of things.

Scott was born into a household where the mother and father knew absolutely nothing about parenting. As time went along, I honestly felt my instincts were probably better than Paul’s, but these were instincts I grew into. Scott was an incredibly sensitive child. And I don’t think incredibly sensitive people fare well in this world.

I well remember Ben Gazzara criticizing my stage anger during a scene at the Actors Studio as “phony…it’s just yelling”—but I guess it fooled enough of the people enough of the time to seem convincing. Something had rubbed off on me. It was the introduction of Joanne and her sexuality into my life. The years of dreaming and longing were suddenly a possible reality.

Joanne gave birth to a sexual creature. She taught him, she encouraged him, she delighted in the experimental. I was in pursuit of lust. I’m simply a creature of her invention.

In life, in relationships, the person who is inconstant does not see that as a flaw. He sees himself as someone who has the ability to be fluid, to see both sides of every question.

The one thing I’ve always admired is excellence. I recognize it in almost anything: plumbers, museum guides, limousine drivers, bank tellers—I delight in seeing it. Maybe we choose those arenas in which we have the best chance for excellence. For me, maybe that’s acting, or being somehow connected to the theater, or capitalizing on the way I look, or fooling people. But I certainly didn’t know what it was to be excellent as a parent.

I’d always believed that on some minor issues there was chicanery in government, but I’d never really imagined a president of the United States actively getting up and lying to the people. Actively asking me to put my status and reputation on the line to support someone who had already torpedoed us. It was a terrible feeling to realize the extent to which we’d all been taken by LBJ.

He also has the ability to accept that human enterprise, whether it’s directing a film or trying to save the world from extinction, requires a process, a process that shouldn’t be measured in terms of “Will the ten thousand dollars I contribute bring some specific result by next Monday?” To my amazement and delight, this guy turned out to be profoundly aware that history is a stream of events that precedes us and lies ahead of us. He understands it is worthwhile doing anything that can point the process in the right direction.