"I'm going to write about the dark times," Adam Nimoy explained to his mother when he began working on "My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life," which he calls "an anti-memoir." "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. . . ."
"That . . . that . . . that never happened to you!" Nimoy's mother protested.
"No, Ma, I know. But that's what people want to hear."
From his first meeting with a prospective agent, Nimoy had to hold on tight to the book he wanted to write. Agents wanted the dirt on growing up with Spock. Nimoy wanted to write about his recovery from 30 years of addiction to pot and alcohol, about the crash-and-burn of his 18-year marriage, about raising two teenage children and, yes, about finding someone to love. Writing the book was a way to pull himself out of the depressing hole his life had become. Not necessarily finding himself -- that obnoxious baby boomer phrase -- but asserting his identity, separate from his father, from the marriage, from drugs.
Back in 1975, Nimoy's father, Leonard, then 44, published his own book about the fight for identity called "I Am Not Spock." "I am identified in at least two specific roles," the elder Nimoy wrote. "Leonard Nimoy -- actor, and Mr. Spock -- Vulcan. . . . Maybe if I can get it all down on paper and see the words and ideas staring me in the face I might understand. I might get a better fix on what I am and who he is."
Adam Nimoy, 51, is a little bit surprised to discover the parallel between the two books.
"For me," he says, "the generational story is incredibly important. My father was the son of Russian immigrants. They arrived in Boston with nothing. My father sold newspapers in the winter as a boy. When he came to Hollywood in 1950, he did all kinds of jobs to support his acting career. There's nothing grandiose about my grandparents or my dad's desperation to survive and succeed or even his passion for his art. It was all about humility and fragility and the value of hard work."
In "My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life," Nimoy writes gently about the consuming nature of his father's work, about the long hours and the fans. "Since the beginning, people have been coming up to Dad from every direction wanting something. . . . Naturally, Dad had to be very guarded when dealing with these types of situations and often times he forgot to let his guard down when relating to me."
