‘Here Comes Trouble’ - A Contrarian Since Childhood

By DWIGHT GARNER, New York Times, Published: September 13, 2011os

In 2001 Christopher Hitchens published a slim, engaging how-to book titled “Letters to a Young Contrarian.” Among its most consequential advice was this: “The noble title of ‘dissident’ must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.”

Comes now Michael Moore — the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, best-selling writer, right-wing bogeyman, blue-collar provocateur, wearer of baseball caps, necessary irritant — with a plump, slatternly book that could probably appear under that same title. A better title for Mr. Moore’s new volume, “Here Comes Trouble,” however, might be: The Education of an American Misfit.
“Here Comes Trouble” is almost but not quite a memoir. It’s an anecdotal, hopscotching account of Mr. Moore’s early life, from his childhood in Flint, Mich., where his father was a spark-plug assembly-line worker, up to the age of 35, when he released his first documentary film, “Roger & Me” (1989). That biting movie — in it Mr. Moore came on like some unholy amalgam of John Candy and I. F. Stone — was about Flint in the wake of plant closings at General Motors, and its success put its maker on the national radar.
To remark that “Here Comes Trouble” is by far Mr. Moore’s best book isn’t extravagant praise. He’s more concise as a documentarian; like all of his books this one is shaggy and overfilled. It’s a cabbage rather than a rose, a tangy ring of bologna rather than a sirloin. Side effects may include heartburn.
Full piece at New York Times.

HERE COMES TROUBLE -By Michael Moore - 

Illustrated. 427 pages. Grand Central Publishing. US$26.99.