Five networks, four marriages and enough life changes to inspire vertigo can`t keep Linda Jane Ellerbee down.
In the throaty Texas cadence that discriminating viewers came to know on now-defunct TV series such as ”NBC News Overnight” and ABC`s ”Our World,” Ellerbee delights in her latest book with her sarcasm and wit as she hops, skips and jumps over important moments in her life.
That wit-expressed in Ellerbee`s trademark honest, unpretentious and often hilarious prose in ”Move On: Adventures in the Real World”
(HarperAudio, three hours on two cassettes, $16)-moves seamlessly from subjects ranging from her childhood best friend, Lucy, to her own alcoholism.
Ellerbee`s selections are well-suited for this audio sequel to her 1986 best seller, ”So It Goes.”
There`s plenty of humor, particularly when she`s ascribing sound-bite size descriptions to the many life roles she has played. The first, ”an enlightened missionary” in the Andes, is followed by ”model wife” of a junior executive trainee in ”garden apartment hell” in Memphis.
As a Chicago disc jockey who falls for a banjo player, she`s ”the fool.” After marriage and two kids with a cowboy poet in Texas, she`s ”the mommy.” Moving to Alaska, becoming a vegetarian and churning out radio programs for a Republican politico makes her ”Earth Mother revolutionary turned working mother hack writer.”
For the last 17 years, she says, she has worn many labels, including:
”humorist, film documentarian, independent producer, coffee huckster, TV writer and pain in the ass.”
Along with Ellerbee`s humor, there`s plenty of pathos in ”Move On.”
The chapter titled ”Time in a Bottle”-each chapter is named from a song title-painstakingly recounts Ellerbee`s difficult rehabilitative stay at the Betty Ford Center in the summer of `89. Says she: ”I used to make Betty Ford jokes. Now I am one.”
Neither falsely courageous nor meekly self-pitying, Ellerbee is at her most powerful when confronting her demons in this segment.
Although it made her a star, TV also profoundly changed Ellerbee`s life in two negative ways as a young girl, she recalls.
First, it ”ate” her best friend Lucy, who simply disappeared into her home the day her father bought the family`s first set. It killed the friendship.
Then when Ellerbee`s family succumbed, family dinners went from conversational get-togethers to silent meals planned around and consumed in front of the tube. To survive, Ellerbee ”learned to speak in 30-second bites.”
Whether preaching, laughing or crying, Ellerbee is at her ballistic best in ”Move On.” And as any true Ellerbee fan knows, she keeps it all in the proper perspective.
”You can never tell anybody anything,” she says, ”but tell them anyway. Tell them Linda Jane said, `Move on.”`
