| The Tolling Bell |
November 2002
|
Lucky Man: A Memoir, by Michael J. Fox
In any decent society, celebrity memoirs would be banned. They are mostly ghost-written, self-serving ego trips that are foisted on fans as pay checks posing as gospel. There is a great joy, then, in running across a work in the genre that not only appears honest but also reveals the previously hidden writing talents of the author. Parkinson's disease may have cut short his acting career, but Mr. Fox could make it as a writer.
While the degenerative neurodisease permeates his book, as it does his life, the tale he tells is not one deserving pity. He was a success very early in life and knows it. He maintains that his love of booze and the fast-lane life was destroying him, and that PD, as he calls it, saved him from pulling a Belushi. That and a wife who loves him enough to tell him "no" in the Hollywood world of "yes."
Throughout the story, whether he is up or down, his writing is a joy. One looks for the name of a ghostwriter, at least in the acknowledgements, and finds none -- merely an editor, brother-in-law Michael Pollan, and a typist, Heidi Pollack. Twice he refers to an episode in his life cutting himself short with "but that's another book." One hopes he chooses to write them.
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Lucky Man: A Memoir
The Kensington Review encourages its readers to visit the Parkinson's website www.michaeljfox.org.