Book Review: My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life



It is to Adam Nimoy's great credit that his memoir does not read like yet another over-privileged, descent-into-addiction, crash-and-burn Hollywood story even though it contains all of those elements. Nimoy manages to avoid the clichés, offering instead a sincere and often humorous account of starting over and self-realization. The author is Leonard Nimoy's son, which is both burden and blessing, something he acknowledges in the book's opening pages. Here, he recounts a desperate meeting with a wolfish literary agent who immediately loses interest when Nimoy pitches a memoir that isn't about being "the son of Spock." Instead, highly unlikely to appeal to the pointy-eared attendees of Star Trek conventions, the story Nimoy wants to tell--and what ultimately became this book--is about how he emerged from a 30-year pot-smoking haze, realized that both his marriage and his directing career were over, and decided to rebuild his life from the ground up. Along the way, he worked very hard to create a good relationship with his teenage son and daughter and attempted to resolve his often fraught relationship with his famous father.

Nimoy realizes that a marijuana addiction isn't the stuff of James Frey-type legend (part of the problem with a pot habit, he says, is that it never allows the user to bottom out and therefore be forced to get help), but once he stops smoking cannabis, he recognizes that he has been using it--successfully--to escape from any kind of emotional discomfort. Some of this came from being in a marriage that hadn't been functional for many years and some came from an unfulfilling career as an attorney and a second, failed, career as a TV director. A much deeper pain came from his father, portrayed here (not unsympathetically) as a mostly absent, borderline alcoholic who had--at best--difficulty expressing affection. But Nimoy doesn't waste time wallowing in bitterness and blame. Once his new sobriety allows him to work out his problems with his father, he uses his new understanding to become a better parent to his own children, both of whom are traumatized when he moves out and divorces their mother. Those passages, where Nimoy describes his sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbreaking conversations with his children, are among the most touching in a book that has many poignant moments. Unpretentious and straightforward, Nimoy's memoir is a surprisingly affecting account of a man who learned to be a good father by understanding who he was as a son.--Debra Ginsberg

 

Powered by: Xtenit