No Job for a Man: A Memoir

Actor and musician Bowie (The Big Bang Theory) meanders his way from the East Village punk scene to Hollywood in this smart, pithy memoir with an earnest emotional arc. Growing up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in the 1970s and ’80s, Bowie was surrounded by the brutality of the AIDS epidemic and the vitality of the theater district (“We were gifted and cursed. Our metropolis offered us everything without caring whether we survived”). This recurring contrast—bleak and grotesque collide with redeeming beauty—keeps Bowie’s free-flowing narrative grounded. When his parents split up, he channeled angry energy into punk rock; his band Egghead played CBGB. After the inevitable band breakup, he found nighttime creative refuge at the Upright Citizens Brigade—which led to L.A., up-and-down TV work, and meeting his wife, actor Jamie Denbo. Bowie employs a light touch while recounting love and family relationships that spark and fade through choice conversational snippets and anecdotes, culminating in a poignant climactic encounter with his brusque father, who softened while in hospice. Brutally hungover, awaiting the birth of his child and the death of his father, he concludes: “Joy and excretion and grief.... This is life.” This one’s like a worn-in band T-shirt at a wrap party: sardonic yet soft. [em]Agent: Todd Schuster, Aevitas Creative Management. (Nov.) [/em]