| TO THE STARS George Takei New York: Pocket Books, 1994 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-671-89008-7 | ||||
| ISBN 0-671-89008-5 | 406p. | HC/BWI | $22.00 | |
Vivid! The man's memories are vivid! This account reads like a smorgasbörd of sense impressions: The colors of an Arkansas sunset; the smell of tortillas and refried beans; the heart-throbbing rhythms of a Taiko Drum ensemble. And, most strongly, the people he encounters and their effect on him. He remembers the names of childhood friends and the adventures he shared with them. He remembers the roommates from an early acting stint in Manhattan — even the one who ripped him off. He remembers outstanding performances by other actors — and some of his own. And of course he remembers his experiences as Mr. Sulu of Star Trek.
It is an episodic account, with some important details omitted. He barely mentions his sister Reiko in adulthood. Although both his parents figure prominently in the story, he never tells us of his mother's death, only of his father's. (True, his mother may still be alive, but she would be very old.) And he tells us very little about his own relationships with women. No, he is not gay; I'm sure of that.1 I put his reticence on the subject down to the traditional Japanese sense of decorum. I also have the feeling that the amount of space he accords here to the female members of his family is in line with traditional Japanese attitudes.
Now I must correct two more possible misapprehensions. Takei is no giddy butterfly, lurching from acting job to acting job, with miscellaneous odd jobs in between. No more is he a Japanese stereotype such as the bowing, L-mispronouncing2 servant — although he has played one in the movies. He is a man of depth and insight. He holds a Master's Degree in Theater History from UCLA, and he also put in three semesters at UC Berkeley as an architecture major. Under his father's guidance, he invested some of his pay from early acting jobs in real estate, and over the years parlayed that into a sizable holding. He has a sense for current events and their implications, and has been heavily involved in politics on the local level in Los Angeles.
The book is well-written, if a bit florid in places. Takei is an actor, after all, with an actor's eye for faces, physiques, voices, demeanors. And he has the actor's need for adoration. So I can forgive his descriptions of the livid, incandescent rage that explodes in his seething brain when — for example — Bill Shatner persuades the director to cut Sulu out of yet another scene. Takei does take offense at slights, but he is not mean-tempered. Another two myths debunked.
I recall only two typos in the book: Once the word "list" is left out of a sentence where (I think) it belongs; once "it" is used where the possessive form "its" is required. (Indeed, it corrected one of my errors. On page 314 the word "remunerative" is used. I always had misspelled this as renumerative.) And there is only one obvious goof: on page 236, Grace Lee Whitney's Star Trek character Yeoman Rand is referred to as "Joyce Rand". It should be Janice Rand.
So, despite its episodic nature and occasional florid prose, this is a book well worth reading. Not only does it offer glimpses into the production of Star Trek and into the acting profession, but it gives us insight into what it was like to be a child in the Japanese internment camps created by Roosevelt's infamous Presidential Order 9066.3 If Takei leaves out some important aspects of his life, well... Is it not an actor's maxim that says you should always leave them wanting more?
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