Norman Lear: Looking back (and ahead) at 92

* EVEN THIS I GET TO EXPERIENCE. By Norman Lear. Penguin Press.

NORMAN LEAR'S led a big life, and at 92, he's ready to talk about it.

The legendary producer and activist, whose 1970s taboo-busting comedy "All in the Family" was the first in a string of Lear-produced hits that included "Maude" and "Sanford and Son," has a new project, a memoir he's called Even This I Get to Experience.

"It's the first time I've written thoroughly about myself. Although I have learned in the course of the years that I was writing about myself and putting it other characters," said Lear in a phone interview Tuesday.

On the afternoon of his book's release, Lear was at CNN, one stop in a book tour that began Monday in Washington and will bring him to Philadelphia tomorrow for a sold-out event at the Free Library. (Tickets to the in-house simulcast may still be available. Details at freelibrary.org.)

More than just an entertaining account of a show-business career that's spanned at least six decades (and isn't necessarily over), the book sees Lear digging into his Depression-era childhood to come to terms with the father who'd gone to prison, when Lear was 9, for attempting to sell stolen bonds.

"When I was a boy I thought that if I could turn a screw in my father's head just a sixteenth of an inch one way or the other, it might help him to tell the difference between right and wrong," he writes.

It's easy to read hints of the father in the audacity of the son who, after serving in World War II, got his start as a New York press agent planting stories about his firm's clients (and getting fired after concocting one particularly far-fetched item). Or in the man who got his foot in the door as a comedy writer by impersonating a New York Times reporter to get Danny Thomas on the phone.

Or in the writer and producer who tried to get Frank Sinatra to read his adaptation of Neil Simon's "Come Blow Your Horn" by having a "reading nook," complete with easy chair, ottoman, lamp and assorted comforts, delivered to Sinatra's home.

Lear appreciates his father's legacy, though, he said. "It was also a desire not to repeat his kind of behavior that turned me [toward] using those things that were glorious about him, like his zest and appetite for life," without following his example.

He doesn't cut himself many breaks as a parent, though "I like the way my kids have turned out," he said, noting that his oldest is 68 ("the same age as my wife") and that the youngest, twin daughters, are 19. (Lear and his third wife, Lyn, have been married since 1987.)

But "when I had five [TV] families on the air, they needed me to live, to breathe," he said, while his own kids "got up and went to school and came home, did their homework. We had our vacations, we had our time together, and I didn't have to do a lot of the steering."

"All in the Family," on the other hand, demanded lots of steering. Lear details his battles with CBS and with star Carroll O'Connor.

O'Connor, a theater-trained character actor who shot to stardom as the bigoted Archie, frequently disagreed with Lear and the other writers, a situation Lear attributes to the actor's fear.

Asked if he'd understood that at the time, he said, "I think I did, because I was able to deal with him without getting truly angry myself. I had work to do, I was frustrated, I didn't like what was going on, but I had some degree of understanding. Like a parent," he said, laughing.

"First time I've ever thought it, but I might have been . . . a better parent to Carroll O'Connor than I was to my own children."

As frustrating as it could be, "it took every bit of that struggle" to make the show what it was.

"I talk a lot about an episode we call the elevator story, where he's stuck in an elevator and a Latino woman gives birth to a baby . . . And Carroll would not go near the script, just five people in an elevator for an entire show, and a baby is born. But I wanted to see the baby born on this man's face, because I knew what a superb actor Carroll was, and I knew that this would be a glorious moment, when he first hears the cry of a baby just born."

Lear, who founded People for the American Way in 1981, remains passionate about progressive politics. A few years ago, he said, he resold the copy of the Declaration of Independence he'd bought in 2001 for what was then a record $8.1 million, but not before it had been publicly displayed in all 50 states and featured in a Fourth of July special in which celebrities read the document aloud from a stage in front of Philadelphia's Art Museum.

"I didn't want to sell it to anybody who would put it on the wall in their own home. The gentleman who bought it hasn't decided yet exactly how he's going to stage whatever he's going to do with it. The only thing I've been guaranteed is that I would be pleased with the way he treated it."

Meanwhile, Lear's keeping an eye on developments in television, declaring Shonda Rhimes, who's currently programming three hours of ABC prime time, "a marvel," and raving about the Amazon series "Transparent," which stars Jeffrey Tambor as the transgender father of grown children.

"I think I'm looking at one of the great, great performances. I mean, he walks the line between hilarity and heartbreak as it's been walked few times in my experience," Lear said.

He was intrigued, too, by the idea that Amazon, which has said "Transparent" is its most popular series so far and has already ordered a second season, doesn't report viewership numbers.

"What's great is that its being or not being doesn't depend on something like numbers. It depends on how impactful it is, how good it is," Lear said.

And would the the man whose shows used to be watched by tens of millions every week be interested in a piece of that alternate TV universe?

"Oh, absolutely. I want to do a show about older people. You know, Betty White, as much as I adore her, does not cover an entire demographic."

Norman Lear, back in the saddle in his 90s? Even this we might get to experience.

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