Amy Schneider’s new memoir, “In the Form of a Question,” captures a life of bold choices well beyond wagers on the Daily Double.
IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life, by Amy Schneider
Amy Schneider is one of the “Jeopardy!” greats, second only to Ken Jennings in games won (40 to Jennings’s 74). She’s fourth overall in regular-season winnings ($1,382,800) and fifth if you include tournaments ($1,632,800). In her new memoir, “In the Form of a Question,” she locks down a No. 1 spot, though, for best hang. Extolling the virtues of recreational drugs, the thrills of casual sex, the flirting potential in offering tarot readings? Ken Jennings could never.
In “Question,” Schneider bounces between bloggier, jokier chapters (“Why in God’s Name Did They Make ‘Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue’?”) and more revealing, still jokey ones, about her gender transition and other formative experiences (“So if You’re Trans, Does That Mean You Like Guys?”). Her prose is warm and funny, though the omnipresent snarky footnotes sometimes deflate moments of earnest momentum.
Other times, the little sidebars are home to some of the more endearing jokes, such as describing “The Music Man” as “probably the best work of literature ever written about the eternal conflict between unsophisticated farmers and the grifters who want to sell them musical instruments at above-market prices.” This is, deeply and completely, a theater-kid book.
“When it comes to other people, I don’t have a setting between ‘at least slightly uncomfortable’ and ‘almost disturbingly comfortable,’ between ‘co-worker’ and ‘Elena Ferrante character,’” Schneider writes. That comes through here, and the more Ferrante-ish chapters are the book’s most interesting. Perhaps there is less of a need for listing the meanings of each tarot card, or an essay describing how good the TV show “Daria” is.
Images from a handwritten diary entry from the day her first wife left; her candor about self-loathing (“I kept a mental list of all my shortcomings, all my failures, everything I had to feel ashamed of, and I tended to that list with great care, always on the lookout for opportunities to add to it”); the nervous ecstasy in her trans awakening — that’s where the book feels the most special and alive.
The gossip in any of us will always yearn for more happy tales of sex and drugs, and Schneider has a bunch of fun ones. “There’s a fascinating nocturnal world out there, and the only people who can access it are those who have done some blow,” she notes. Sure, having a long-term partner who cares about you can be fulfilling. “But when you hook up with somebody who doesn’t know you well, then it must be because they’re horny for you, and that feels great!”
Fleeting moments of righteous bitterness — “not that everything about my wife’s sexual relationship with a mysterious homeless felon that she met at a comedy open mic was perfect” — and tossed-off lines about acrimonious friend breakups and decades-long love triangles add edge and fizz.
In the scheme of “Jeopardy!” memoirs, this one is not particularly “Jeopardy!”-centric. There is no training-montage section, no “Jeopardy!” war room, and Schneider describes herself as a lonely and ambivalent student. Her self-actualization comes about not through a career in software engineering or through making money from trivia, but through casting off the oppressive guilt and shame around sex and bodies that colored her entire young life.
Fame is mostly but not exclusively great, she admits, and drifting too far into its bubble is dangerous. “I love how many more ways I can now imagine life turning out for me,” she writes, though “icon, but like in a cautionary tale sort of way,” could be one of them.
Trans stories are often commodified for either misery or nobility in the face of misery, but “In the Form of a Question” is a much fuller, livelier, more textured and sardonic picture. When you win enough money to quit your job, you actually get a new job, Schneider says. She describes hers, wryly but rightly, as “Famous Celebrity Trans Person.” If this book is part of the gig, things seem like they’re going pretty well.
IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life | By Amy Schneider | 272 pp. | Avid Reader Press | $28
Source: Television - nytimes.com
