It is fair to say that memoirs are often written too soon, when lives have all but just begun, a phenomenon that seems especially prevalent in sports and entertainment. The novelist Joyce Maynard recounted how it took her 25 years to write her biography in 1998. In a Poets and Writer’s magazine article titled, “Patience and Memoir,” she talked about needing to understand what had happened, the effects on her life and the long road traveled “to make sense of my experiences.” Jimmy Johnson, the football coach with such a stamp on Miami and South Florida, has had a book in him for years. It is ou…
