Lucky Man: A Memoir by Michael J.
Fox
Very Pleased
The same sharp intelligence and self-deprecating wit that made Michael
J. Fox a star in the Family Ties TV series and Back to the Future make
this a lot punchier than the usual up-from-illness celebrity memoir. Yes,
he begins with the first symptoms of Parkinsons disease, the incurable
illness that led to his retirement from Spin City (and acting) in 2000. And
yes, he assures us he is a better, happier person now than he was before
he was diagnosed. In Foxs case, you actually might believe it, because
he then cheerfully exposes the insecurities and self-indulgences of his
pre-Parkinsons life in a manner that makes them not glamorous but
wincingly ordinary and of course very funny. (As for the question, Does it
bother you that maybe she just wants to sleep with you because youre a
celebrity? My answer to that one was, Ah...nope.) With a working-class
Canadian background, Fox has an unusually detached perspective on the
madness of mass-media fame; his description of the tabloid feeding
frenzy surrounding his 1988 wedding to Tracy Pollan, for example,
manages to be both acid and matter-of-fact. He is frank but not maudlin
about his drinking problem, and he refreshingly notes that getting sober
did not automatically solve all his other problems. This readable, witty
autobiography reminds you why it was generally a pleasure to watch Fox
onscreen: hes a nice guy with an edge, and you dont have to feel
embarrassed about liking him. --Wendy Smith
Features:
Here's how pervasive the Michael J. Fox phenom has been: I saw only one
episode of Family Ties, was dragged by my peer group to Back to the
Future, and have never seen Spin City. Yet I still knew, before getting this
book, That MJF was from Canada, the names of his wife and each of his
four children, and that he had Parkinson's. I told myself I was reading this
book for the serious, noncurable illness aspect, but would I have cared if
Michael J. Fox weren't so intriguing?
The book is mostly about how Parkinson's took over (and, he says,
improved, his life) but there's so much leading up to it. OK, it's a common
story arc: working class childhood, struggling actor, successful,
cocky,actor, substance abuse, revelation. But it's so well written it feels
fresh.
The writing is so vibrant it should be used in High School composition
classes: you can open to any page in the book, at random, and get a
clearly written, beautiful, evocative passage. I especially liked the young
actor parts ("At auditions, be confident but for heaven's sake don't
memorize the part or they'll think you're arrogant; you also have to hope
you are not too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, or remind
the casting director of any relative he doesn't like." Also: "An actor reading
a script goes, "BS, BS, MY part. BS, BS, MY part").
How can he write about BEING a jerk and still not SEEM like a jerk? But
he succeeds. He gives a lot of the credit to his substance abuse recovery
to his wife, who seems to have grounded him beautifully and accepted his
Parkinson's as part of the man she loves. Could any woman be as wise,
as confident, as loving and patient as Tracy? I don't think so. If he is a
lucky man, she is also a lucky woman, to be seen that way through his
eyes.
Fox tells of his discovery of his illness with such vivid detail you feel you
are discovering it with him. As an actor, he's got just the right blend of
telling a story we all know with the spark to make it draw you in yet again.
And when he gets to the day-to-day detail of controlling his symptoms as
much as he can, he gives adequate but not too much information, just
enough to make it intriguing reading. Fox's even and level argument in
favor of stem cell research was equally impressive.
Lastly, I admired how he kept setting goals. Long after superstardom,
wealth, and diagnosis, he sat down and took the test to get his G.E.D. He
even reveals his math score.
He's won me over. Parkinson's Disease research is the next cause I want
to support.
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