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A review by varlisia
Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography by David Javerbaum, Neil Patrick Harris
2.0
I was surprised and delighted to find this book at my local library; with my love of autobiographies and the Choose Your Own Adventure books I grew up with, (not to mention my affection for Neil Patrick Harris) it should have been a slam dunk. I opted for the audio book, which added the unique experience of having the author himself reading it aloud, with all the inflections and intonations that he'd intended when he wrote it. The beginning of his memoir was quite funny, and it was gratifying to hear about his happy childhood and his close relationships with his family. It's obvious there was a lot of love there, and his deep affection for his parents comes across very clearly. As the book goes on, however, there is a distinct tonal shift that's hard to cleanly describe. Where the book eventually lost my enthusiasm was a ways past the halfway mark, during a chapter he wrote about his attempts to conceive his children.
There's a surprising amount of venom, both in his voice and in his choice of words, when he describes his experiences choosing egg donors and surrogates to help complete his family. One woman withdrew unexpectedly, and the way he talks about her is beyond bitter, verging on hateful. Even more unexpected was the overt and undisguised contempt he had for the women he ended up choosing, who he described as being selected for their extreme plainness of appearance, so that they might be a 'canvas' for his and his partner's genes to be expressed on. The way he speaks of the surrogates and egg donors is so harsh and dehumanizing it actually caught me off guard; he seems to have a lot of anger towards these people and it's not at all clear where that's coming from. His discussion of finding people that were appropriately 'Aryan' (his choice of description) was similarly strange, and he spent a fair amount of time denigrating the appearances of the women who were willing to offer their own bodies so that he could have the children he hoped for. It was not only the women he rejected whose bodies and faces he commented on, but even the ones he chose. It was a protracted audit, and though the book does eventually move on from the subject the tone never quite swings back in the other direction. The way he describes his daughter, even, is anchored in gendered expectations for what she should look like and what careers she will aspire to. The childhood behavior he describes is not gendered, and is common in many children, but he jokes that it is evidence she may grow up to become involved in sex work as an adult. It feels out of step; it's as though the author believes that he feels one way, but can't help but respond another way.
The way he talks about women and girls changes significantly between the first half of the book and the second, and he seems like he projects a lot onto them without even noticing it. It was strange and discordant, particularly because he describes so many warm, close relationships with women in his life, both as friends and family members. It shouldn't be hard for him to see women as full humans, but it seems as though there's some compartmentalizing with regard to which women are people and which women are something else, something Other. I was surprised and disappointed, and the experience of listening to him narrate his feelings on the subject was uncomfortable, because there was no way to imagine that he intended the words differently or wanted them read in a mitigating tone. I had the unpleasant experience of hearing the words exactly as he meant them, and the way he meant them was a lot less kind than I would've hoped for.
There's a surprising amount of venom, both in his voice and in his choice of words, when he describes his experiences choosing egg donors and surrogates to help complete his family. One woman withdrew unexpectedly, and the way he talks about her is beyond bitter, verging on hateful. Even more unexpected was the overt and undisguised contempt he had for the women he ended up choosing, who he described as being selected for their extreme plainness of appearance, so that they might be a 'canvas' for his and his partner's genes to be expressed on. The way he speaks of the surrogates and egg donors is so harsh and dehumanizing it actually caught me off guard; he seems to have a lot of anger towards these people and it's not at all clear where that's coming from. His discussion of finding people that were appropriately 'Aryan' (his choice of description) was similarly strange, and he spent a fair amount of time denigrating the appearances of the women who were willing to offer their own bodies so that he could have the children he hoped for. It was not only the women he rejected whose bodies and faces he commented on, but even the ones he chose. It was a protracted audit, and though the book does eventually move on from the subject the tone never quite swings back in the other direction. The way he describes his daughter, even, is anchored in gendered expectations for what she should look like and what careers she will aspire to. The childhood behavior he describes is not gendered, and is common in many children, but he jokes that it is evidence she may grow up to become involved in sex work as an adult. It feels out of step; it's as though the author believes that he feels one way, but can't help but respond another way.
The way he talks about women and girls changes significantly between the first half of the book and the second, and he seems like he projects a lot onto them without even noticing it. It was strange and discordant, particularly because he describes so many warm, close relationships with women in his life, both as friends and family members. It shouldn't be hard for him to see women as full humans, but it seems as though there's some compartmentalizing with regard to which women are people and which women are something else, something Other. I was surprised and disappointed, and the experience of listening to him narrate his feelings on the subject was uncomfortable, because there was no way to imagine that he intended the words differently or wanted them read in a mitigating tone. I had the unpleasant experience of hearing the words exactly as he meant them, and the way he meant them was a lot less kind than I would've hoped for.