Review 629: Ludes

Ludes by Ben Stein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is completely different than what I thought it may be. Many, many years ago I picked this up at a used book library sale, during a brief moment when I thought I’d like to be a psychologist someday. I believed this book was a psychological case study, something academic. No, it is not that.

This is a non-fiction account of a friend of Ben Stein's descent into drug addiction. Stein, who used to host a game show called “Win Ben Stein’s Money” and has appeared in films and such. He’s a writer as well, starting with the Nixon presidency. This book takes place shortly after the political writing ended and now in 1976 he’s writing for The Wall Street Journal, mostly cultural type pieces. Ironically he was the only one with any graduate work in economics on the editorial staff, yet he’s the one not writing the economic pieces.

Stein writes about his friend Lenny Brown, from their first meeting at The Wall Street Journal where Lenny tried to sell him on a financial real estate tax shelter deal on a cold call. For some reason the two clicked and they become friends. The book is a slightly autobiographical, but primarily a profile of his friend and his demise into becoming addicted to quaaludes, or ludes. Yet even here it takes a very good portion, about 40 percent of the book, before Lenny takes his first pill.

We learn all about Lenny’s life of selling and not quite making it, then he gets his break and is hired this guy Max in Los Angeles. Finally Lenny is living the life he always thought he deserved. Eventually Stein makes his way to Los Angeles too, now working with production companies.

The book is non-fiction, but all names have been changed, except Ben Stein’s and one other that is noted in the book. Yet it is written like fiction, recanting conversations and other minute details. Stein mentions how he knows these things, but there are moments when some of this must be fictionalized for the sake of the story and flow.

It's quite readable and quick, but a bit unusual really. I expect this is something that has become a bit obscure.