Talk to Lucky Man: A Memoir like its author wrote you back.
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What it argues
Michael J. Fox's memoir of his early career and his experience of being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at thirty years old — an age at which the disease is exceedingly rare — is one of the more honest celebrity memoirs in the genre. Fox begins with the morning in 1991 when he woke to find his left pinkie finger trembling uncontrollably, a symptom that would eventually be diagnosed as early-onset Parkinson's, and works backward to his childhood in Canada and the television success of Family Ties and the Back to the Future trilogy, before returning to the decade of concealment and the eventual public disclosure.
Fox kept his diagnosis secret for seven years, managing his symptoms with medication while continuing to act, marry, and have children. The memoir documents this period with considerable self-awareness about the contradictions: he was simultaneously doing some of his best work and drinking to manage anxiety about the disease's progression. He acknowledges a substantial alcohol problem during the concealment years and credits his wife Tracy Pollan with insisting on treatment. The honesty about alcohol dependency is what separates Lucky Man from more sanitized celebrity memoirs.
What it gets right
- 1.
Concealment of chronic illness has costs that compound. Fox's seven years of hiding his diagnosis required escalating deceptions and contributed to his alcohol dependency.
- 2.
Early-onset Parkinson's is a different disease experience from the late-onset version that most people associate with the condition. Fox was thirty, at the height of his career, with young children.
- 3.
Acceptance is not resignation. The memoir distinguishes between giving up and deciding to live fully within one's actual circumstances — a distinction Fox explores with more nuance than most illness memoirs.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Michael J. Fox was born in Burnaby, British Columbia in 1961 and began acting professionally as a teenager. He achieved international fame playing Alex P. Keaton on the television series Family Ties (1982–1989) and became a film star through the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990). He was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's disease in 1991 at age thirty and disclosed the diagnosis publicly in 1998. He subsequently founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which has since become the largest private funder of Parkinson's research in the world. He has published four books, including Lucky Man and Always Looking Up.
