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I have to admire that author Spoto was able to make a likable book about a loner who appeared to be equal parts difficult, immature, and just flat out odd. (I already knew about the oddness - and I'm not referring to and/or making a cheap joke about his love life - from celebrity anecdotes in previous books and documentaries.) James Dean sounds like he was one unlikable person a lot of the time, but I don't think Spoto hates him - as suggested in other reviews - just that this is a fair-handed 'warts and all' biography.

I also found it highly amusing that Spoto trashes the usual notion that Dean was raised in some idyllic heartland by noting that Great Depression-era Indiana was actually a hotbed of violent crime (think Dillinger) and Ku Klux Klan activity, not to mention not at all very accepting of certain religions / political ideas / lifestyle choices, etc.

But certainly there is a pall hanging over everything - not just Dean's unexpected death, but the early fatal illness of one parent and the strained, almost non-existent relationship with the other causing such an apparent problematic ripple throughout his adult life.

As an irrelevant postscript, I will paraphrase critic Richard Roeper in which he fancifully imagined that if Dean had survived to middle-age (or longer) he may have eventually headlined a 70's TV series as a wise-cracking detective. I would've liked to see that, too.