The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education

By Peter Coyote       (Get the Book)
Besides having an unusual upbringing—influenced greatly by a wealthy, angry father and depressed mother; a brave, smart, and thoughtful housekeeper; a taciturn, skilled groundskeeper; and bebop jazz player Buddy, who taught him that “life could be improvised”—actor-writer Coyote was an astute, remarkable young man, able to hear animals speak and aware, early on, of the separation of mind and body. But he was also crippled by a vow never to “play,” to compete. This engagingly written exploration of his life has a few, sometimes disorienting blank spaces, but those are “covered in detail,” Coyote points out, more than once, in his memoir Sleeping Where I Fall (1998), and readers may prefer to start there for the full story. Still, there’s plenty here, in anecdotes of caring for the hungry in his Digger kitchens in Haight-Ashbury, befriending and learning from Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gary Snyder (and then following Buddhism for more than 40 years), becoming a respected actor, and raising his own family with the wisdom he carefully garnered as a youngster. --Booklist