Review: GOVT Cheese

By Brad Hubbard | 6/6/2024

Review – GOVT Cheese

Steve Pressfield’s memoir is pretty scattered but it gives you a pretty full picture if you care to dive in. Pressfield is a screenwriter/novelist whose most famous work is ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’ which was made into a movie by Robert Redford back in the early 2000’s and starred Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron among others. But if you’re reading ‘GOVT Cheese’ to get an idea about that book and accompanying movie, you won’t get it. ‘GOVT Cheese’ is really about Pressfield’s struggle to find himself through marriages, odd jobs and a Chevy Van that may or may be still in use somewhere in New Mexico. 

I heard about ‘GOVT Cheese’ via the Rich Roll podcast some time ago and figured that I would give it a shot. I had never heard of Pressfield but I did know the movie ‘Bagger Vance’ and thought it was pretty good. Pressfield was/is a working writer in Hollywood. He jumped back to novels to write ‘Bagger Vance’ and it probably cost him a lot of screenwriting work in Hollywood but hey, looks like it all worked out in the end for him. 

Most of the book is about his job as a truck driver back in the late 60’s and his subsequent odd jobs like picking apples in Washington to fund his writing career that he was sure was going to take off after he finished this book…or the next one. He had various marriages and relationships along the way but the two constants were this typewriter he kept lugging around and his cat Mo who adopted him. 

“I’ve heard that birds sing out of pure joy. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe writers write or painters pain because they’re bursting with the exuberance of life. They write because they’re in pain. They write to exorcise that pain. They write or paint because if they didn’t, the pain would kill them or drive them mad.” 

-pg. 177

The anecdotes are good, the sections are super short. It’s a weekend beach read for sure if you hustle. It has some good takeaway lines in it and one has to appreciate his perseverance. But if you pass on it, you’ll be ok.