He is not the son of Spock

He describes in the book how, for years, he would "take my old man out of the closet in my mind and give him a good thrashing for all the hateful things he has said and done through the years." It has taken decades, he writes, to stop blaming and resenting his father, mostly working on his own. "I've never had much luck arguing with him. Have you ever argued with a Pop Culture Icon? Have you ever argued with a guy who can cause a frenzy among thousands at a convention hall simply by performing a Vulcan hand salute?"

Ironically, "I Am Not Spock" reveals Leonard Nimoy's consuming nature, the extent to which the studio became home and family. While shooting "Star Trek," he worked 12 hours a day, five days a week. "My fellow artists," he writes, "were all my brothers and sisters and I had several parent figures: directors, producers and studio heads . . . when the Spock character became as successful as it did, I felt I was a son who was doing his share to carry the family load."

Thirty-three years later, his own son has had several careers: lawyer, television director, teacher and author. Writing gives him a huge sense of accomplishment -- "A book is totally yours." He has played rock guitar for years but is the first to admit that his son Jonah has all the musical talent.

"Maybe it's true that talent skips a generation. The limelight was never for me."

It's taken work for Nimoy to get here. "My Miserable Life" documents the individual therapy, the couples therapy, the AA and Marijuana Anonymous meetings, his time in a writing group. All of it is what Nimoy refers to as "process."

Much of this work has been in the name of learning to be a good father, trying, as Nimoy says, to model appropriate behavior -- patience, tolerance.

This hasn't been easy. During his separation and divorce, Adam Nimoy's children begged him to come home. He writes about it, and these passages are among the most painful in the memoir. "How's it going to feel?" his daughter Maddy yells at him one night. "How's it going to feel, to be living the rest of your life alone in that apartment?" He describes how much he misses living with his children, being able to watch them sleep and sit with them while they do their homework.

Father and son, in their writing, have similar timing; a light, comedic touch, particularly in moments of pain and fear. Both use imagined dialogue in certain passages: the elder Nimoy with Spock and the younger with his dad. In "I Am Not Spock," one of these passages reads like this:

Nimoy: Spock, What is life?

Spock: A state of being.

Nimoy: Let me put the question another way: Why is there life?

Spock: Yours or mine?

Nimoy: Anyone's.

Spock: You've missed my point . . .

Nimoy: Which?

Spock: "Yours or mine" . . . I was trying to suggest something.

Nimoy: You've lost me.

"My father's point in that book," Adam Nimoy explains, "was that he was in process constantly. I admire the process. Unfortunately, he was all about the process. He was not that good at balancing. As a child of the Depression, he had this drive to survive."

He laughs. Even as communicative as he tries to be with his own son, he suspects that Jonah complains about his father in therapy. "What's up with that?" he asks.

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susan.reynolds@latimes.com

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My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

An Anti-Memoir

Adam Nimoy

Pocket Books: 296 pp., $23