It's Only Temporary : The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive

by Handler, Evan

• ISBN13: 9781594489952
• ISBN10: 1594489955
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-05-01
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover

Summary

A provocative, funny, and whip- smart memoir of how one man learned to find joy in his own life after years of hand-to-hand combat with death. Actor and author Evan Handler’s new book, It’s Only Temporary, is both a deeply personal memoir and a series of meditations on life, love, faith, gratitude, and mortality. In closely examining his own triumphs, mistakes, and less-than-ideal relationships since his miraculous recovery from a supposedly incurable leukemia more than twenty years ago, Handler zeroes in on the most profound question facing every human being: How can a person live well with the knowledge that time is limited? In doing so, Handler has created a poignant and wildly funny rumination on the ironies of human existence. Structured as a collection of incisive and probing autobiographical stories , It’s Only Temporaryis a startlingly candid portrait of one man’s struggle to find love and happiness within a life he knows he’s lucky just to have. By turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, blunt and shocking, Handler’s defiantly unconventional memoir ultimately succeeds as both a stirring love story and a classic coming-of-age tale. It’s Only Temporarycelebrates the transformation from boy to man—even if it took Handler more than forty years to get there.

Author Biography

Evan Handler is an actor best known as Harry Goldenblatt from HBO-'s Sex and the City and the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors. Handler currently co-stars in Showtime-'s hit series Californication co-starring David Duchovny. His past acting credits include Lost, The West Wing, Ransom, and Taps. Handler also has written for Elle, Mirabella, O, the Oprah Magazine, USA Weekend, and The New Yorker.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
"Separation" Anxiety	p. 1
Remember Richard Burr	p. 16
The Sickest First Kiss	p. 23
I Don't Know	p. 32
The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made, or "I Don't"	p. 40
Menace to Society	p. 47
My Life Story	p. 55
My Clock Ticks, Too	p. 82
Tiffany '99, Sotheby's '01	p. 85
The Two-Month Second Date	p. 102
Medicine Man	p. 118
Thanksgiving Days	p. 134
Italian Dreaming	p. 145
How Did You Two Meet?	p. 154
A Little Fame and Lots of Women	p. 169
Renovations and Terminations	p. 179
You Don't Know Where You Are, Until You're Somewhere Else	p. 196
On Death and Dying	p. 202
The End Is the Beginning (of the Beginning of the End)	p. 212
Acknowledgments	p. 221
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.