Ticket 2 Ride

I was prepared for this book. Josh Brolin is not your typical writer. He’s a published poet, an existential expressionist, and it comes out in his acting.

From Under the Truck (2024, Harper) is written like a diary, whose pages are all scrambled into an odd order. Somehow, the trail of diary entries makes an interesting journey.

What you learn in his memoirs is that Brolin had a hard early life – yes, he had a famous actor father, but he lived with his frequently-moving mother. Hard-drinking, many partners, frequent moves, a son that died – Jane Brolin and son Josh were close and lived a life that lacked stability and structure. Brolin’s journey didn’t smooth out much as an adult.

Brolin played a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones in a Men in Black film. It wasn’t the first time they had appeared in the same film but not acted together. Brolin has an assuredness, a swagger, a coolness that Jones exhibits in his films, but looks more like Nick Nolte, who has that earnestness quality that Brolin has in many of his roles.

Brolin started acting at a young age, but did not live a Hollywood lifestyle. He got into his share of trouble as he recounts in various passages. The read gets more of the turbulence in Brolin’s 50-plus years than the smooth parts of the journey. Married three times, including to actress Diane Lane, we learn very little of that part of his life, or his film career.

Brolin remains an enigma even more so after reading his book. The smooth road is not interesting or challenging enough for Brolin. He might not look for trouble, but one eye seems to scan the room for an unnoticed problem about to appear. Happiness seems a work-in-progress, and life has many views, especially from under the truck.

4/5