My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life: An Anti-Memoir

by Adam Nimoy

Overview

The funny, sad, and heartwarming memoir by Leonard Nimoy's son Adam Nimoy—who bounces back after suffering through severe drug addiction, multiple career changes, and a devastating divorce.

Augusten Burroughs meets Don Rickles meets Larry David in this riveting chronicle by the son of Spock that includes a thirty-year battle with drug addiction, three career changes, one divorce, a major mid-life crisis, and countless AA meetings. In this frankly humble and hilarious anti-memoir, Adam Nimoy shares the incredibly wonderful, miserable truth about life as a newly divorced father, a forty-something on the L.A. dating scene, a recovering user, and a former lawyer turned director turned substitute teacher...in search of his true self. And, most importantly, he shares the wonderful, miserable truth about growing up the son of a pop culture icon. He’s been rushed by crazed Star Trek fans at a carnival, propositioned by his father’s leading ladies, promised by his own teenage daughter that she never wants to see him again, and fired by famous television producers for his temper.

In a city and amidst an industry where appearing perfect is a way of life, Adam Nimoy doesn’t mince words, and My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life is his cautionary, startlingly honest, and very funny tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439125465
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	06/09/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,096,701
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Adam Nimoy is a director, writer, and lecturer. He lives in California. Follow him on Twitter: @Adam_Nimoy.

Read an Excerpt

Telephone Call to My Mother

It started several months ago when I called my mother with the good news.

"Mom, I'm thinking about writing a book."

"Really? What are you going to write about?"

"Me and my wonderful life."

"That's a great idea. You can write about all the people you met and how you used to go to the set with your father and about the time they put the ears on you."

"Mom, I'm not going to write about that."

"What? Why not?"

"Because nobody wants to hear about that crap. I'm going to write about the dark times, about the times when I was down and out, about the times when I could barely survive, like when you and Dad were out of town on some Star Trek press junket and I was strung out on the floor of that men's room downtown, when I almost OD'd and was passed out in my own vomit in that stinking men's room with the toilets overflooded and shit everywhere and the glaring lights and the bums and the flies and me on the floor passed out with a needle in my arm." My mother's about to have a heart attack over the phone.

"Tha...that...that never happened to you!"

"No, Ma, I know. But that's what people want to hear."

Copyright © 2008 by Adam Nimoy

Editorial Reviews

"Mr. Spock's soul-searching son struggles with a classic midlife crisis and emerges from his iconic dad's shadow... a touching, humorous, and in the end wise account of how a Hollywood brat transcended lifelong resent of his father by learning to accept without blame." — Kirkus Review

From the Publisher

Nimoy knows some people will only be interested in his story because of his family connection to the Star Trek actor, his father Leonard Nimoy; early on, recounting an excruciating meeting with a literary agent, he contemplates calling his book I Am Not the Son of Spock. There are a few celebrity-filled anecdotes, such as his youthful crushes on Jill Ireland and Bibi Andersson. His core story, however, is about the personal upheavals that come when he decides to end a decades-long addiction to marijuana. Once he stops using pot to shield himself from pain, Nimoy realizes his marriage isn't working. The separation hits his adolescent son and daughter hard, and the book's most poignant scenes track the turbulence as he works to maintain a place in their emotional lives. Nimoy's career as a television director has honed his sense of story; in one chapter, he reframes a youthful run-in with the cops as an exercise for his film students to find the "moment of decision" driving the character. The best scenes from this "anti-memoir" zero in on those emotional cores, enabling Nimoy to tell an instantly recognizable story of heartache and recovery with deceivingly simple honesty. B&w photos throughout. (July)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Mr. Spock's soul-searching son struggles with a classic Hollywood midlife crisis and emerges from his iconic dad's shadow. For Nimoy, avoidance was always the cure for dealing with stress. Drifting between careers, from self-destructive TV director to disenchanted entertainment lawyer, he woke up one morning in a sleeping bag in an empty apartment, freshly divorced and wondering how everything fell apart. After 30 years of pot-smoking escapism, the 40-something father of two finally sobered up and discovered he needed to reinvent himself, which meant an end to his miserable marriage and a new job as a substitute teacher in Santa Monica. With drugs no longer an option, he found shelter in sharpening his carnivorous dating skills by chasing tight-jeaned blondes at his weekly AA meetings. Perhaps in reaction to his childhood with (but mostly without) a workaholic and absentee father, connecting with his own children became the author's primary concern. Worried by signs of hereditary addiction-his daughter was experimenting with pot and his son looked to be a budding shopaholic-Nimoy approached their uncertain futures with caution, teaching himself to cultivate affection. Soon, his life spun into a new direction: He entered a writers workshop, accepted a job as a film-production teacher and began penning this memoir. Peppered with sophisticated jabs at Leonard Nimoy followed by "See, I'm a better father than you were" anecdotes, the book's opening chapters bubble with angst. But this is no Daddy Dearest; the narrative brilliantly mirrors the author's progression toward awareness. Initially riddled with unrelieved tension and unexpressed feelings, the prose becomes more expansive andreflective as Nimoy's self-realization unfolds. Touching, humorous and in the end wise account of how a Hollywood brat transcended lifelong resentment of his father by learning to accept without blame.

Kirkus Reviews