The great film critic Gene Siskel used a clever litmus test to justify a movie’s existence. He would ask, “Is this movie more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?” Fan Fiction, a “mem-noir” nominally written by Brent Spiner, calls for a slightly modified version: “Is this style of writing more interesting than just a straightforward memoir?” The answer in this case, I think, is no.

“Mem-noir” is a pretty terrible neologism in the sense that it requires a lot more explanation to those curious about what you’re reading than you expect it will. As used by Spiner (and his ghostwriter Jeanne Darst),1 it generally means that it uses real people and real events from his life in a fully fictionalized context. That context is that in 1991, Brent Spiner, an actor on the popular television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, is being stalked by a crazed fan who calls herself “Lal”, after the android daughter his character, Data, attempted to create in the season-three episode “The Offspring”. Deep knowledge of the episode is hardly a prerequisite for understanding what’s going on, as the context is explained at length. Peppered throughout, however, are long tangents into the past that have the distinct patina of truth, and would be a lot more fascinating if they didn’t randomly show up in the middle of a fictional shaggy-dog story.

Review: 'Fan Fiction,' by Brent Spiner : NPR

It’s not the worst idea I ever heard, but the reason for telling a story in this way is no more clear to me after reading the book than it was before. I’d love to read an unvarnished account of Brent Spiner’s life, but I hate that I can’t get that without also getting a ton of lascivious wish fulfillment about boinking a bodyguard and an FBI agent who are identical twins. The mem-noir framing is like picking a super-long hair off your dinner plate. Perhaps Spiner’s obsession with Old Hollywood would seem less self-indulgent if there was one chapter on it in a regular memoir instead of trying to cram it into every other chapter of this Frankenstein’s monster. Maybe his issues with his stepfather would make me feel less like “men will write a novel about getting a pig’s penis2 in their fan mail before they go to therapy” than it would if I was more primed for stepfather issues to begin with.

I became interested in the book after noticing it on the new-acquisitions shelf at my local library, but after reading some online reviews mentioning the cameos from the rest of the TNG cast, I elected to absorb Fan Fiction in audiobook format. That is not usually a format I prefer for literature—I like being able to savor the flavor with text, so to speak, and with video and audio, I get distracted easily and find myself rewinding a lot. I think the decision paid off. Their line reads may not always be the most natural-sounding, but it’s clear they had such a blast playing good-natured caricatures of themselves (especially Patrick Stewart) that it often temporarily carries you over some rocky patches, and it always gives me life to see how much these people love and support each other.

That’s not really enough to save it in the end, however. I suspect my disappointment with Fan Fiction is more acute than it might be otherwise, and that could be my fault for putting Star Trek on a much higher pedestal than other pop culture. The book is a total mess in terms of narrative, but if you like feeling like you’re hanging out with the actors, the audiobook may still be worth it on some level. Overall, it tries to do a lot of different things, which is somewhat understandable—Brent Spiner is 74 years old, after all, and might be feeling like he needs to combine bucket list items if he wants to cross them all off—but I wish it only did one thing really well instead of a few things not so well.

Stray Bits

  • The most mordantly amusing part of this whole saga was forgetting to cancel my Audible trial, then getting reminded about my monthly credit a few days later, along with the suggestion “Why not check out Still Just a Geek?” Clearly the algorithm is not a dedicated reader of the site.
  • If you alternate scrolling up and down on the above picture of the cover very rapidly, it makes for a trippy optical illusion.
  • With my first year of teaching in full swing and occupying nearly all of my waking hours in some way, it has been hard to squeeze in time for all my leisure pursuits, but I promise I never have them far out of mind, and I hope to be knocking out Dafydd ab Hugh’s Vengeance (which will be review number 250!) soon.