WIRED: THE SHORT LIFE AND FAST TIMES OF JOHN BELUSHI

by Bob Woodward

(Simon And Schuster)

I approached this book with some suspicion, the controversy still being hot. Judy Belushi, John’s widow, had made it clear she thought the book was unfair—that Woodward’s depiction of John was incomplete and that he had failed to convey that “drugs are fun.” A scandalous comment to some, but I knew exactly what she meant—too often these anti-drug scenarios fail to relate what it is in the drug experience that draws people into it, and a drug warning that doesn’t delineate the seductiveness of drugs is often defeating its own purpose. Since nobody starts out as a strung-out addict, by emphasizing almost exclusively the bad times, these warnings seem—to the neophyte drug user—unwarranted, hysterical, unrelated to reality.

And besides, Dan Aykroyd had called the book “pulpish” (which I take to mean sensationalistic), and Aykroyd is a smart cookie.