Alex Trebek’s memoir, The Answer Is, talks about his career in jeopardy and his battle with cancer.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate can earn an affiliate commission. We update the links whenever possible, but please note that offers may expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.

I’ve always wondered if Alex Trebek would be good at Danger! Trebek projects scholarly imperturbability as he deals “answers” on matters of general knowledge mid-row. He pronounces Charybdis and osteoarthritis with aplomb And occasionally he expresses gentle surprise at a fraudulent question, suggesting that he would not have been mistaken like this. Then again, you never have a chance. Is Alex Trebek really a smooth polymath, or just a game presenter who can read?

New quick memories of Trebek, The answer is …, provides a refreshing and direct response. “Against my companions (people in a coma), it would be good for me”, he confesses happily. “But a good thirty-year-old boy would clean my watch.” Turns out, Trebek’s genius has never been in his intellect. It is in its firmness. If the book slightly tarnishes the image of Trebek that superfans may have built in their own minds, it provides something more profoundly reassuring to replace. Alex Trebek may not be an intellectual, but he is, at least in his own words, a completely healthy mensch.

Trebek scoffs in his introduction that some of what it includes “may even surprise him,” and claims that one reason he finally agreed to publish a memoir at age 79 was “to stay ahead of the tabloids.” But it’s hard to imagine that tabloids find a lot of grain here. Some have dutifully reported in one paragraph chapter on Trebek’s experience of accidentally having so many “potato croquettes” at a party in Los Angeles that he had to spend the weekend recovering at his hosts’ house. Trebek calls himself “a bit of a shitty shaker” and some colleagues at the military college “a lot of dicks.” But even this is not a sign of genuine rebellion: He confesses that he deliberately “decided to add more salt to my language” after arriving in Los Angeles from Canada. He wanted to fit in as “one of the boys,” but he didn’t drink or use drugs. In recent years, he adds, he’s been cursing less than he used to.

“In addition to my passion for musk ox, I also have a deep love for horses.”

– Alex Trebek

Here is the Alex Trebek the reader is in The answer is …. Alex Trebek likes soup. He adores his wife and children. His divorce from his first wife was so amicable that they ended up living across from each other. Respect your colleagues. His favorite philosopher is Mark Twain. His motto is “A good education and a kind heart will serve you well throughout your life.” A chapter on politics recommends “common sense” about liberalism or conservatism and ends with some emphatic advice for both parties: “Enough!” He loves 1 percent milk.

Like a writing The answer is… easy drop Trebek does not claim that the book is a narrative masterpiece or an excavation of his psyche. “We are getting to the highlight,” he writes in the introduction. “It is an aperçu of Alex Trebek, human being. How is he? What have you done? How did you go wrong? That sort of thing. “Each of the 82 short chapters begins with a clear thematic sentence:” I’ve always loved movies. “” People often ask me how I juggle a career and a family. “” In addition to My passion for the musk ox, I also have a deep love for horses. “The chapter titles, each of which begins with some version of” What is … “, are also clearly stated:” Rheumatism, ” “Great colleagues”, “The musk ox”.

But despite his good humor, memory does the job of developing a character millions of Americans have spent their nights with since the 1980s. Trebek was raised in a working-class home in Ontario; His Ukrainian immigrant father worked as a hotel chef. Trebek writes about helping his father make wedding cakes at the Nickel Range Hotel, a popular hotel in the mining town of Sudbury. Little Alex’s job was to collect empty spools of Kodak Brownie film that he had frozen to serve as cylindrical supports for the top layers of the cake. After a peripatetic school career, he ended up as an announcer with the CBC, and then moved to Los Angeles for a concert featuring a game show called The magician of probabilities. Danger! released in its current version in 1984 and has been on the air ever since.

The book offers some insights into the mechanics of Danger! itself, though nothing new to attentive fans. Trebek shoots five shows a day, two days a week. He tries to keep his jokes encouraging, positive, and cautiously topical. (“If it’s Valentine’s Day, I’ll start with ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone'”). She complains about the contestants starting at the bottom of the board, but acknowledges that it is an increasingly common strategy. He writes with admiration for champions like Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer, and resurrects some dark canon favorites. Although he is very much in tune with the hosting duties, overall, Trebek seems more like a fanatic than an intellectual author. When traveling, he looks for interesting facts that could become a danger clue, but he sees it as a pleasure when one really is on the board.

Trebek had ruled out previous opportunities to write a report, but his diagnosis last year of stage IV pancreatic cancer changed the estimate. He received a great deal of public support, which pushed him to open up. But opening does not mean conjuring anguish where it does not exist. “I don’t have a lot of ghosts,” he writes, somewhat credibly. “I have no bad memories that affect my life. It’s all good. “Trebek frankly writes about the darkness he faces: the side effects of chemotherapy and the conversations with his family about when to stop treatment. But he also seems unprepared for the end of the game.