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Books
"The Rock Says"
by RockWrestler, Joe Layden, Rock
--Chicago Tribune
"The Rock tells his story with humor, honesty, and not a little
trash talk."
Hot on the bleeding heels of Mankind's Have
a Nice Day! comes another memoir by a bad-guy character World
Wrestling Federation fans love to hate, edited by the same prose coach,
the clever Jeremie Ruby-Strauss (and coauthored by Joe Layden). Dwayne
Johnson, a.k.a. the Rock--who calls himself "the People's
Champion," affects an arched eyebrow to convey entertaining menace,
and coins catch phrases like a standup comic--gives you plenty of
colorful, jumbled action photos and the growling accounts of staged mayhem
that made Mankind's book a bestseller. But his story is more interesting
than that of Mankind, his occasional ring rival. The noisy action chapters
alternate with passages of more reflective conventional autobiography: the
Rock is a third-generation pro wrestler, and his book amounts to a history
of the sport. His grandpa, High Chief Peter Maivia, was a Samoan important
enough to be buried in Diamond Head's crater, and his dad, Rocky Johnson,
was George Foreman's sparring partner and the first African American World
Wrestling Federation Intercontinental champ. The Rock is candid about the
battles his family faced outside the ring: the marriage-testing road
lifestyle, his dad's most important win (over the bottle), and the
author's own dangerous temper. There's something touching about the Rock's
unpromising debut in his uncle Tonga's old trunks, in his reverence for
his elders--and something scary about his reaction when he thinks people
lack such respect.
What, you say? You'd rather hear about the
Rock's "schmozz" (free-for-all) with Mankind, or Faarooq and the
interracial Nation of Domination, or that Budweiser-popping piece of
trailer trash Stone Cold Steve Austin, or the Undertaker, whose skin is
"the color of bad meat"? You want to hear how he started out
sleeping on a pungent mattress retrieved from a garbage dump and wound up
wearing Versace shirts and chatting up Gennifer Flowers on TV at
WrestleMania XIV? You crave the secrets of the Frankenstein, the Gorilla
Position, Jake the Snake, and Mankind's Mandible Claw (a dirty sock he
shoves down opponents' throats)? That's all here, too. Just hop in the
ring--the Rock will show you around.
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