Book 9: Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography

Neil Patrick Harris

And now for something...somewhat similar, but much more successful. I am a fairly recent convert to the Neil Patrick Harris bandwagon, having thoroughly enjoyed him in How I Met Your Mother and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but I've come to appreciate his off-screen sense of humor and the inspiring way in which he unapologetically lives his life as a gay man. This book, though likely ghostwritten by Dave Javerbaum, does a good job of capturing its subject's voice and, more importantly, the sense of humor that comes along with it, which is so crucial to pulling the whole thing off. One senses Harris's hand at work throughout the book- which isn't always a given for celebrity memoirs- and it only rarely lapses into outright bragging (though the chapters about how wonderful Elton John's various homes are can get a bit grating). Instead, what Choose Your Own Autobiography offers is a history of Neil Patrick Harris's career with a reasonably well-balanced dose of personal insight, particularly regarding his husband and their two children. So, add another decent celebrity autobiography to the pile.

Not quite.

Choose Your Own Autobiography is not, in fact, a metaphorical title hearkening to existentialist philosophy. Rather, it is a very literal description of the book, which is, indeed, written in the classic format so familiar from the original novels and their many imitators. The book follows through on its title's lofty promises, offering most of the familiar tropes: dead ends with alternate universe endings, divergent and intersecting paths, a cheat that takes you almost directly to the end, a few hidden surprises, and even a loop! The canonical use of second-person present narration may throw some readers at first, but I failed to notice it after a while and found the book, instead, to be far more immersive than most other memoirs I've encountered. Something about the constant use of "you" makes you (the reader) feel much more present in the story, distancing it from the general bragging tone that tends to characterize the genre, and the book's self-awareness and laid-back tone ensure that the whole thing works rather than seeming like a gimmick.

This, I believe, is largely due to the intricate plotting and mapping that inevitably go into a book like this- of whatever quality. While I at first thought that I might be able to read the whole thing more or less sequentially, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the forks did appear, leading to the various paths and outcomes you'd expect. The text offering the various choices was often as hilarious as some of the anecdotes, and the choices make sense: readers can pursue a cinematic career, pursue theater, pursue amateur (or, in one ill-fated timeline, professional) magic, pursue a family. It's much like real life, in that respect, and the way that each major crossroad does lead to a path in Harris's actual life might make the reader consider whether their own choices are always either/or. Sure, it takes a bit of finagling and re-tracing one's steps to read every bit of the book, but the fact is that, one way or another, all of this did occur in Harris's own life. There may be a larger lesson here, but Harris leaves it to readers to extrapolate for themselves, as the book carefully avoids any pretense beyond the grandiose (and largely fulfilled) ambitions of its chosen format.

It is remarkable how normal the book becomes once it earns the reader's full buy-in, and it is one of the rare cases where a very inherently silly gimmick actually works as planned, conveying a powerful meaning without relying too heavily on its own cleverness. At a basic level, Harris and his writers go all-in, play it straight, and see a large return on their bet. Sure, some of the alternate endings are over-the-top, and the memoir is remarkably cheerful despite current trends focusing on the seedy underbelly of, well, everything; nonetheless, the book provides an enjoyable experience that mirrors the public image that Harris projects. He does, after all, offer an overwhelmingly positive and generally excitable public persona, and the somewhat sugarcoated nature of the book jives with the personality he projects. Neil Patrick Harris appears to be a genuinely happy human being, and his memoir cannot be faulted for merely reflecting this, whether it represents the whole truth or not. The book ultimately feels honest despite its consistently cheerful tone and its admittedly ridiculous gimmick, which both serve to reflect and enhance their subject despite all of the potential pitfalls. Choose Your Own Autobiography is a refreshingly light take on the memoir that impressively employs the intricate plotting that is essential to making its gimmick work; in the end, the reader forgets that it is a gimmick at all and is eager to live their version of Neil Patrick Harris's life again, and again, and again.

Grade: A