Book Reviews
Go To Hopkins & Company Homepage	Go to Executive Times Archives Go to Book Review List
Lucky Man: A Memoir by Michael J. Fox Rating: ••• (Recommended)
Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com
Becoming Oneself Many readers of the new memoir by Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man, will remain confused about why Fox is so adamant that he would never want to have the ten years he’s spent with Parkinson’s Disease (so far) ever taken away from him. From his perspective, what he’s learned about himself, life, and others has taken place because the disease caused him to reassess what’s important. Every reader who’s clarified his or her own values will understand what Fox means, and find this memoir a testament to growth through adversity. Here’s an excerpt: “The year 1993 was turning out to be a dry version of 1992. I had a lot of time alone to think, but I spent very little of that time considering a future with Parkinson’s disease. Mostly I plotted ways to busy myself with anything but. I made no effort to find a neurologist or to learn more about the disease. I signed on for another Universal comedy, Greedy, slated to start production in L.A. that May. With a different trainer, I started working out again – putting on pounds of muscle mass, and looking healthier than last time, een though my symptoms were getting worse. While filming Greedy in L.A. that summer, Mikey opened and bombed. When For Love of Money finally hit theaters that fall, it too failed to generate any business. In the same way I’d fired my old agent to jump-start my movie career with Peter Benedek, I now let Pete go and signed on with one of the big-three mega-agencies. Hell-bent on doing the same thing over and over and somehow expecting different results. By year’s end, I’d begin to understand why this approach is often described by people in recovery as a sort of functioning insanity. Charting the course of my emotions during this period is a grim and tricky task because it’s not a time I went through with eyes wide open. In effect, I kept my head down and plowed forward, tensing in anticipation of running into walls but lacking the clarity or wisdom to see them coming. It was not so much a journey as an experience of being lost in a no-man’s land – far more disorienting than any hall of mirrors, a place where I’d at least recognize some reflection of myself, however distorted.” There appears to be no ghost writer for this memoir. Fox spent the time himself and found the words for what he wanted to communicate. While the writing won’t win awards, this heartfelt story in Lucky Man leaves a reader with a smile and with some understanding about living a full life. Steve Hopkins, August 14, 2002
ã 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the October 2002 issue of Executive Times For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com