A Vulcan Odyssey

The fact he's tried to cram nine lives into his singular `one' might explain Lawrence Montaigne's affinity for cats; and though his affinity for women needs no explaining you will find plenty of both in his recently published autobiography. In "A Vulcan Odyssey" -- titled for his role as Stonn in the original Star Trek television series - Montaigne recounts his innumerable rises and falls. Writing of his early struggles as an actor in New York City -- "When work was scarce we learned how to live on air but we paid cash for our lessons and we rehearsed and we learned." - he may as well have been talking about his whole life and its wild fluctuations of fortune, and more importantly, his uncanny ability to adapt. Early on in his career in Hollywood when the acting jobs were scarce, Montaigne broke into film as a dancer and a stuntman. Later, on a kibbutz in Israel, he herded cattle in the Negev Desert with a carbine slung across his back. Still later, he began a lucrative business photographing actors in Rome. Not to mention his stint as a mule (he lugged 80 pounds of bullion in a specially-made suit) for a European ring of gold smugglers! And these aren't half of the things Montaigne has done to make ends meet. In between all these ways to make a living and his carousel of four wives, Montaigne still managed to do, for him, what made life worth living: the pinnacle of his acting career arguably coming with his role as the Canadian POW Haynes in the movie The Great Escape, wherein he worked alongside such Hollywood luminaries as Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson. Montaigne's straight-forward writing style saves hardly any space for psychological and/or philosophical insight, leading the reader to wonder if perhaps (aside from the fact that there are so many interesting twists and turns to relate!) this manic forward momentum is not an analog to the author's own personal, unthinking style. The lack of navel gazing forces the reader to extrapolate any deeper meaning in "A Vulcan Odyssey" for himself, which, to take a wild stab at it, may be "Never slow down enough to freak out about where you're going." You get the picture?