This is a terribly-written biography. It's incoherent, unfocused, and mostly uninformative. But you're probably a die-hard Guy Clark fan if you're thinking about reading it, he was probably a hero to you, as he was to me for decades, and there are a few interesting tidbits buried in the noise.I could write pages about the problems with the writing. It's obvious from the list of sources and the time Ms. Saviano put into this project, that she worked hard at it. It's just never clear what her focus was meant to be. The book is divided into 3 parts. The first part is written from an ancestry.com perspective. It's like reading those bible verses that endlessly list who begat who. The first hundred or so pages only told me that Guy had a pretty normal childhood, liked music, and that a few song titles or subjects came more literally from his life in Texas than I'd previously imagined.The second part of the book is about the great years in Guy's career. Like part 1, it includes throwaway bits of sometimes-inaccurate history that fit so awkwardly into the narrative. This part is written partly as the story of Guy's career progressing, partly as random name-dropping of musicians and places they hung out, and partly about the author's career promoting Americana as a music genre in her various jobs as she rose from magazine writer to more important positions. Which is all well and good, but isn't about Guy Clark and maybe should've been saved for her own autobiography.Part 3 covers the time period during which the author actually knew the songwriter, from 1998 to his death. There's a lot of medical detail and pages of lyrics and information about who played on what song that I already have in my record and CD liners. Or lists of what shows were played where and when. This part is also a bit of a love story by a fan watching a hero who's also become a friend
decline and die. It's not a very well-written love story, but I do like the page of lyrics the book ends with. Even the best authors have trouble with good endings, and this not-so-great author ends the book well.Still, I learned nearly nothing about what made Guy Clark tick, what made him successful, how he wrote his songs or how the arc of his life progressed in any meaningful way. I learned that he was loved, I learned that he drank a lot and behaved badly as a result. I learned he had marital problems. But none of this is fleshed out and I'm not sure it's enough to write a book about. There's almost no there there in this book. I don't know much more about Guy Clark now than I did buying the music, reading the liner notes, and going religiously to his shows.Biographies as a genre tend to be inspiring. Biographies of popular musicians tend more tabloid in nature, but there are at least entertaining books about musicians those of us between Clark and Saviano's age grew up with. I enjoyed a book about the Beatles here or the Doors there even if it was fluff. I expect to enjoy reading Yaffe's biography of Joni Mitchell, who's just a couple years younger than Guy and is just as much of a songwriting hero to me. It was at least written well enough to get a NYT review, and a pretty favorable one.I highly recommend Guy Clark's music. It's more consistently good in the 20th century, but he wrote some great songs in the 21st, and My Favorite Picture of You is a song worth hearing over and over. I can't recommend slogging through this book, but if you're a fan you'll probably do it just as I did. You may even like it better, as most of the reviewers here did. Although I think an awful lot of them found the first part of the book to be rough going. And I admit it's an easier read after that, and a more fun read, even if it's frustratingly uninformative.