APPETITE FOR RISK What It Is, Who Has It & How I Survived: An Adventure Memoir by Robert R. Abbott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
(from “Healing Self,
Others, the World,” Knox Book Beat, The
Berkeley Times, 24 August, 2023)
Robert R. Abbott Appetite for Risk: What It Is, Who Has It & How I Survived / An Adventure Memoir (2023) Regent Press, Berkeley, CA is the “confessional” memoir by a heterosexual man I’ve been waiting decades for. Kerouac may have started the serious “guy book” interior monologue craze, but Abbott really uses it to examine what academia, world travel, social change and the Sexual Revolution taught him about gender roles, money, values, addictions and eventually about his real self; the motives for and results of his actions on other people and the world, the interior and exterior paths to good health, a balanced lifestyle, more authentic relationships and even spiritual peace.
He has the same persistent curiosity as Lazard; sheer, passionate, outspoken quick thinking as Khan-Cullors, the daring “life-on-the-edge” addiction Warren does and cross-cultural paradoxes the Cambodian émigrés of Cengel’s Exiled do, often blindsided by the obvious. As far as the book goes, he comes out of it in his eighties not quite “smelling like a rose,” but at least honest about his foibles, “learning experiences” and grateful for his embrace of a more spiritual and “common sense” lifestyle. A very good peek into "an interesting mind at work" (D. H. Lawrence) in an exciting life.
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