That's not to say Knotts was not an exceptional storyteller. Griffith's and Nabors' expansive vocabulary compensated for Knotts' lack of fulsome flattery. His reserve did not dissuade Andy Griffith and Jim Nabors from their unrestrained remarks towards him. He reportedly detested giving interviews, and of those interviews, few and far between, he was interesting and intelligent but always very quiet. He was a shy man, seemingly with the inability to fully and properly express himself, at least verbally.
He rarely gave detailed interviews, and if anyone recalls the Mayberry Cast Reunions over the years, he was always less vocal than his peers. One must also consider that Knotts was a man of few words. It's also apparent that an aging, partially blind man could not completely control the transfer of verbal storytelling to written text, but the book was, as it stands, no doubt approved either way. Daniel de Visé transcribed from the tapes some of the more adult-themed details in his biography, ''Andy & Don.'' It's apparent based on the short excerpts that comprise of the final product that the book had been heavily censored for content. Though they allowed certain choice words to slip through the cracks ('goddamn' and 'son of a b-' just to name a few), they seemingly edited from Knotts' initial recordings the more dark and disturbing details of his past that would not sit well with his Middle American following, nor do justice to his squeaky clean public image. Suffice to say, the original audio recordings reportedly contained more detail- details the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group, an imprint of Penguin, felt were not appropriate for the family-friendly Mayberry audience. Therefore, Knotts quickly scrawled handwritten notes by feel of the pen before he dictated memories of his early life and career into a tape recorder for his secretary to transcribe into text. The basic task of writing had also been severely hampered. However, his quality of life had been affected in such a way that this once well-learned man, albeit not totally blind, could no longer read (a real tragedy for a man who loved to read) and resorted to studying his lines upon pure memorisation. The disease had gradually reduced his central vision, though he could still see from his peripheral vision.
Prior to drafting this book, Knotts was battling the onset of age-related senile macular degeneration which threatened to rob him of his sight. First of all, the beginnings of the book came to fruition circa 1998 when Don Knotts was about seventy-three years young. There are many complaints about the lack of detail of Mr Knotts' memoir, but one has to understand the condition of the author in order to forgive the brevity.
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