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

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Overview

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 ...

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Overview

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 Temporary is 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 Temporary celebrates the transformation from boy to man—even if it took Handler more than forty years to get there.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
Evan Handler has described himself as an actor, author, screenwriter, journalist, leukemia survivor, healthcare educator, activist, reformer, inspirational/motivational public speaker. This collection of essays is the second book by the Broadway veteran and Sex and the City star. It's Only Temporary brings us up to date on Handler's life since Time on Fire. Like its 1996 predecessor, this autobiographical book touches on his battles with cancer as well as his idiosyncratic take on lighter topics such as acting, dating, and psychotherapy.
Amy Tan
In It's Only Temporary, Evan Handler confronts the ambiguities of life backward, forward, and in between. With hilarious honesty he reflects on the realization that we can start over again. It's Only Temporary is a heartfelt book for all of us who are getting younger and older at the same time. (Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and The Kitchen God's Wife)
More Reviews (8) Fewer Reviews
David Duchovny
Change is good - that's the credo Evan Handler reinvigorates with the hard won wisdom of this hard luck story. Handler's prose style is disarmingly funny and smoothly conversational. He writes like a guy who's just happy to be here, and a little pissed off at you if you're not. As he has worked hard to shape himself into a good actor, life has shaped him into a good man. The cover photo is worth the price alone. (David Duchovny, actor, director, screenwriter)
Lance Armstrong
Evan Handler is a man who's looked into the abyss and laughed. His book, It's Only Temporary, made me laugh along with him. He covers love, lust, showbiz, triumph, and despair – and he manages to be both funny and inspiring about all of it. It's an important book that I think can help to spread goodness around the world. Something we desperately need. (Lance Armstrong, seven time Tour de France Champion; Founder, The Lance Armstrong Foundation)
Lewis Black
In a series of wonderful essays, Evan Handler gives himself up to us - warts and all. To our amusement and bemusement we share in his emotional growth as he struggles to mature. I not only laughed along with him but felt that I too had grown a little along the way. Who could ask for more? (Lewis Black, comedian, Daily Show correspondent, and author of Nothing's Sacred)
Liz Tuccillo
Evan Handler's unsparingly honest stories about life, love, and his own shortcomings are hilarious to read and oh, so easy (and fun!) to relate to. By the end you will be left with the surprising but unmistakable feelings of hope and redemption. It's Only Temporary is truly an inspiration, particularly for anyone who's out there looking for love. (Liz Tuccillo, co-author of He's Just Not That Into You)
Meghan Daum
Evan Handler is not only a fine actor, he's a damn good writer. It's Only Temporary is wise and funny and as righteously indignant as it is endearingly self-effacing. In what may be a literary first, the book actually left me wanting more. (Meghan Daum, author of My Misspent Youth and The Quality of Life Report)
Neil Simon
Evan Handler's new book is simply wonderful. He pulls you inside his life, and you come out his very close friend. (Neil Simon, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright/screenwriter of Lost In Yonkers, The Odd Couple, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and The Goodbye Girl)
Publishers Weekly

Handler, Sex and the City star (Charlotte's bald, tubby husband) and author of the cancer-survival memoir Time on Fire, struggles to grow up in this collection of autobiographical essays. Handler has issues to rehash, including his bitterness over the years lost to illness, complaints about medical care he received, showbiz wrangles and, above all, his testy relationships with women. This last topic provokes both showy self-reproach and sly self-exculpation; "[m]y progress toward maturity might have been lethargic," he allows, "but it's inaccurate to state... that anything was 'my fault.'A " Not the breakup with uncommunicative fiancée Patricia; or the rift with Abbey Leigh, a sexual dynamo given to screaming rages; or the jealous fit his future wife, Elisa, threw when he innocently mentioned another woman's breasts. Handler has funny stories to tell (one mega-agent suggested he package his bout with leukemia as an amusement park ride) and desultory thoughts to dispense ("Do I think there's a God? I don't know"). Unfortunately, his egotism often robs him of perspective, as when he jumbles together Elisa's abortion with his small-claims lawsuit over a botched floor refinishing. As Handler parades, bemoans-and excuses-his erstwhile callow self-involvement, his confessional drips with it. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
Best known for his work in Sex and the City and The West Wing, full-time character actor and part-time author Handler follows up his gripping memoir about surviving cancer (Time on Fire, 1996) with a collection of autobiographical essays. They cover topics ranging from acting and psychotherapy to dating and selling an engagement ring; approximately half the essays are connected to his illness. Beating leukemia was obviously a defining moment for the author, and it's hardly fair to criticize him for writing, often touchingly, about the experience. Still, the woe-is-me percentage is relatively high, and Handler's self-pitying (and periodic self-flagellation) grows difficult to read by the book's final third. Nonetheless, it has some fine moments. "Menace to Society" is a cockeyed, High Fidelity-esque rundown of notable girlfriends, and the author's honesty about his roller-coaster love life is admirable. "My Life Story," which details the attempt to translate Time on Fire into a screenplay, provides memorable entree into the head of a writer (a scary place to be, as all writers know). Handler's prose is readable, sometimes even clever: "When I was first shown the collection of buildings my father-in-law owns in Molinella, a small town in northern Italy," he writes, "I immediately began calculating how much longer he might live." The primary problem here is that the author seems like a decent person, but not necessarily the kind of guy with whom readers want to spend nearly 300 pages. His brutally frank and blisteringly angry debut was far more compelling. Painfully honest and self-deprecating to the point of discomfort.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781594489952
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
  • Publication date: 5/1/2008
  • Pages: 240
  • Product dimensions: 6.32 (w) x 9.32 (h) x 0.98 (d)

Meet the Author

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

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 5 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted June 17, 2008

    I LOVED this book!

    These essays are absolutely wonderful. They are so heartbreaking and funny, smart and witty. I loved it and I cannot wait for the next round!

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