He's telling his own story; that's going to be a lot of "I". I don't read him as conceited at all; if anything, he's pretty humble about it.
"It was nuts. Totally obsessive-compulsive. Call it an exercise in eccentricity or futility, and you'd probably be right."
How is that humble? A good writer would tell the story and let the reader decide how crazy and eccentric he is.
There are a million ways to write about personal experiences without using "I" every other sentence and bragging about how great you are.
I probably shouldn't have even said anything.
The guy taught journalism for 20 years and was a newspaper editor for a similar stretch. Maybe take a deep breath and consider that there are kinds of good writing that you haven't yet learned to appreciate.