I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro

read by the author

Full disclosure: I have a massive crush on Jett Reno, Tig Notaro’s character on Star Trek: Discovery. That may or may not have influenced my review.

Those of you who aren’t Star Trek folks (though honestly, what do you do with your time???) may have heard of her famous stand-up routine where she began with, “Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer.” If you haven’t heard of it, go google it now.

Basically what happened was, Ms. Notaro was hospitalized with a painful and life-threatening condition, and her mother died after a freak accident, and her girlfriend broke up with her, and she was diagnosed with bilateral invasive breast cancer, all within 4 months in 2012. Bringing it to her standup routine in that raw way was her way of trying to be as alive as possible.

This memoir is about that year—the four-month period just mentioned, and the 8 months or so that followed. It’s full of all the despair and hope and chaos and love and confusion and connection that you would expect. Ms. Notaro was of course knocked completely flat by all of this; she doesn’t claim any special strength or courage. Quite the opposite. She’s not self-deprecating in the least, but she’s honest and straightforward and utterly humble.

And she managed to face her world falling completely apart with a kind of grace. A very human grace, peppered with failures and lapses in kindness and common sense—but still, a grace. I think that, and her unflagging sense of humor, derive from her refusal to refuse to face the facts, tempting as it might have been. 

That’s what I find admirable about her. And what I admire and appreciate about the book is her willingness and ability to keep the raw parts raw and not try to gloss them over or tie a pretty bow around them. At the same time, while the reader does accompany Ms. Notaro to the depths of the worst days of her life, there are notes of humor and hope throughout.

I wish her a long and happy life. And I hope you will check her memoir out. It’s harrowing sometimes, but it’s also beautiful and satisfying and will give you all the feels.

Robin by Dave Itzkoff

Read by Fred Berman

Wow. Just… truly. Wow.

When Robin Williams died, it hit me hard. Yes, he’d been in quite a few embarrassingly bad movies. But he’d also been the heart and soul of some that had been sources of joy and comfort and solace to me. He was a bright light in the world and the loss of that light made my world noticeably dimmer.

I was also deeply furious with him, for having taken his own life. And bewildered that somebody who was so loved by so many, and had such obvious and brilliant talent, would do such a thing. How could he fail to understand that the world would be a dimmer place without him? That lasted a long time.

Finally enough time had passed that when this book came to my attention I decided I could stand to read about him. And it was just right. Itzkoff takes us through his life story, from his parents and their backgrounds, through his lonely childhood and his insecure early career, to the years we remember best. And of course we didn’t know him at all. In some ways, nobody did; I came away with the impression of an incredibly lonely man.

Itzkoff is gentle with his subject, but thorough. This isn’t a money-grubbing, celebrity-shaming tell-all, by any means, and yet I came away with an impression of having at least glimpsed every side of Robin Williams, including the less-shiny bits. But I also came away with an impression of the whys. Why he became who he became, why he took those roles, why he ended his life. Whether my impression is accurate or not, of course I will never know. Nobody but Robin Williams really knew Robin Williams. But I feel like I know some of the reasons for that, and I’m glad. And devastated all over again that he’s gone.

The narrator, Fred Berman, does a great job giving us a feel for the voices of the people whose quotes he’s reading, without quite mimicking them. I’d give him five stars--but he somehow failed to learn that Marin (as in Marin County, where Robin Williams spent much of his adult life, so it gets mentioned a lot in the book) is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. This was seriously and frequently irritating and seems like a major oversight. Aside from that, excellent narration.