Stay West, Young Man

Brand Management 101: If you were a status hound who has observed two (remarkably unappealing, it must be said) women and one octogenarian blow your party’s chances against a (remarkably unappealing, it must be said) septuagenarian, and you were to write a memoir, wouldn’t you work the phrase “young man” into its title? Gavin Newsom is 58: not exactly young, but, as the physicist said after he took a paternity test, it’s all relative. A memoir by a non-retiring elected official has two principal functions: to increase that official’s name recognition in advance of the next campaign, and to adorn with its insubstantial spine the shelves of Airbnb rentals. Check and check? No. Newsom wants more. Young Man in a Hurry is a sorry attempt to invite young men back into a party that has done its best to excommunicate young men.

California’s governor was once lanky and introverted and dyslexic and diligent. A few of these he still is. He had a distant, though in no sense absent, father, who studied French literature and settled for law, and who was never very good with money but always around a great deal of it. Young Gavin was bullied: “Hey, Newscum, you seem in a hurry.” (Schoolkids in the late ’70s came up with that put-down, you hear?) He was, he is, an obsessive perfectionist. Grandma Jean in the ’30s “thumbed her nose at the Red Scare and took a flight to Soviet Russia,” where she stayed for three years. She gave him colored pencils and taught him to “draw beyond the linear”; to see beauty in his mistakes. Useful for a career in central planning. He saw Rocky and purged his piggy bank to buy a pair of Everlast boxing gloves. He had a paper route — “I can’t lose this job, Mom” — making $3.50 an hour. Minimum wage plus tips. His father once took him to the toy store with John Paul Getty III, nephew of Newsom père’s close pal and grandson of the world’s richest man. Typical boyhood stuff.

So boyish was Newsom’s boyhood that he might have been the earliest adopter of CliffsNotes at Redwood High. Reading books sucks, right, boys? Ever diligent, he bused tables and he dug postholes (now at $7 an hour) for a guy named Jeff and he played basketball and baseball and was taught how to pitch by a friend of his father’s — oh, those friends of his father’s — Art Groza, an attorney and yachtsman and Oakland Athletics minor-leaguer. Whether Newsom played, or was ever expected to play, college baseball is unclear. Santa Clara University recruited him all the same. First baseman with a partial scholarship. His college girlfriend cheated on him with his roommate. He failed a class twice and graduated. (Dyslexia, remember?) Father made a call, and he stumbled into the employ of real estate stud Walter Shorenstein. He rented a place with Andrew Getty. He opened a wine store and café with Andrew and Billy Getty and “a Pelosi or two.” (Did we not mention the Pelosis? Extended family by marriage. It’s all relative.) San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was a regular.

You get the gist. Newsom is a young man, just like you and me, except not really like you and me at all. That’s fine. Brand management tends to overrate “relatability” at the expense of honesty. But Newsom writes (or his ghostwriter does) like an intelligent cynic who’s feigning self-awareness. On the extraordinariness of his life, his voice cracks; it’s found and quickly lost. He admits that Santa Clara “had no business taking a chance” on him but doesn’t consider whether a recommendation by Governor Jerry Brown, an old family acquaintance, might have stacked the odds a bit. We’ll never know. Oh, those friends of his father’s. He knows that early in 2003 he was a middling candidate in the San Francisco mayoral race. The field featured Angela Alioto, former president of the city’s board of supervisors and daughter of Joseph Alioto (mayor, 1968–76). Also, the gay activist Tom Ammiano, who as a write-in candidate in 1999 had forced Willie Brown into a runoff. Newsom was “polling fourth but campaigned hard.” No mention at all of the endorsements by Willie Brown’s bros (Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson) or of Gordon Getty’s donations. Newsom outspent the runner-up five to one. Oh, those friends of his father’s!

The young man shows off his mediocrity in order to ingratiate himself with large numbers of young men who are likely to never read this book, in a way that’ll be all too obvious to those men and women who will. He worked long hours and drank too much. He married too early and made a poor husband. Divorce (and don’t forget about dyslexia) did slow, steady damage. He hooked up with a staffer. He went to therapy and then on a blind date; gave marriage another shot, earned a purple-gloved stalker. He delayed his gubernatorial run because Jerry Brown was back: You shouldn’t “take on your elders.” He patiently came to terms with his imperfections, evolved — he can’t stress that enough, though he certainly tries. Look, he’s just a guy who wants to live: up to the expectations of his forebears (such as Grandma Red) and with the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. To do that, he’ll soon need your vote, I bet. In the meantime, prepackaged authenticity is available in hardcover starting at $26.40.