Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

I’ve always loved Eddie Izzard. In late 2007, I watched most of his stand up comedy DVDs from Netflix: Definite Article, Unrepeatable, Dress to Kill, Circle, Glorious, Live from Wembley, We Know Where You Live. I even saw Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story. I saw him live in a theater with a questionable layout that I was sure would be death trap in a fire, but I didn’t turn around and leave. I worried about him during his multiple marathons and celebrated when he finally broke into the world of dramatic acting (Hannibal!). I immediately requested Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens when I heard that he wrote his memoirs, which I was blissfully unaware was a big mistake.
I know there is a difference between writing something because you enjoy it and having an editor that you should listen to. Just because you are compelled to write about something, and it helps you tackle a turning point in your life does not mean that someone needs to read it. Half of Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens is about his childhood, and Izzard does not tell it in a linear fashion. Just when I thought that the book was moving forward, he turned the car around and explained how his parents met. While his verbal delivery makes him a success, Izzard’s writing style is too similar. I suspect that he recorded the entire book, and someone else transcribed it later. He uses footnotes to elaborate on a story, which took me out of the story and made it difficult to get back in. If he included the tangent in the main text, it would have been easier to follow. I have always known that Izzard is an atheist, which does not bother me. When he wrote god instead of God, he felt compelled to explain why, which is fine and helpful for those who don’t know him, but I also thought that the lack of capitalization was self-explanatory. When he continued to explain that there is no god every time he casually used the word god in the first part of his three part book, which was the largest part, it went from being slightly amusing to repetitive and annoying. Then he dropped it for the remainder of the book, which I did not mind, but was inconsistent editing and storytelling after 175 pages of a 348-page book. I asked a friend who used to be a copy editor at a major publishing company how long should the childhood portion of an autobiography be for a famous person. She did not hesitate when she replied 6 pages. I almost ditched the book entirely when he started describing his sports career at boarding school.
I hate to say skip to the second part of Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens, but you should, particularly if you are young and are looking for guidance in territory that seems to be new for anyone as an artist, as someone who is different or is facing unique obstacles. The third part is more thematic for Izzard to expound on things that he finds interesting. Because Izzard is mostly self taught using what he describes as the Nuffield syllabus, figure out what he wants to do then experiment on different ways to get there, there may be some controversy over how he classifies himself or describes his experiences versus what the words generally mean to others in that group. Before he used to classify himself as a transvestite, but now he uses it interchangeably with transgender, which he explains is part of his sexuality. Obviously as a cis woman, I defer to the trans community regarding how to define trans, and am not trying to cis-plain to someone who clearly knows more about his life than I would as a distant observer. The following is not intended to demand that Izzard change any part of who he is or detract from his experiences as someone who is part of the LGBTQ community. He is who he is, and I accept and glory in who he is as an individual.
I am curious how transgender people feel about his definition of transgender, especially as that community is trying to correct misconceptions and others’ characterizations of who they are. Izzard uses it to describe his “sexuality,” not his gender. He is comfortable in “boy” or “girl mode,” is not in drag and never describes himself as a woman though he clearly embraces his masculine and feminine sides. He calls himself a lesbian and only uses male pronouns. His description seems to be closer to gender queer or gender fluid whereas transgender people appear to usually define themselves as born one sex, but are actually another and must transition to the other gender because the birth gender is the false one. The transgender community distinguishes sexuality or sexual orientation from gender orientation. Izzard does not experience pain when he is in boy mode, but is on a spectrum where he is comfortable with both. He is attracted to women. I think there may be some tension between Izzard’s hard fought journey of self-discovery and what others in the transgender community describe as their experiences. Or perhaps there is a distinction based on region. I’m here to learn and am on guard against extrapolating from Izzard’s experiences to broadly apply it to other transgender people thus inadvertently cause harm. For instance, because Caitlyn Jenner in interviews is comfortable with using male pronouns when describing her past or when people use her birth name, I initially thought that was acceptable, but it is not. If applied to other transgender people, it is an act of violence called dead naming, i.e. misgendering. Casual cruelty is not what Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens is about so I hope that Izzard would not mind me making a distinction between describing his life and a community. I do not think that he is trying to represent everyone, but had to find a world and a language to fit his life without imposing his world on others or pulling a Dolezal.
Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens was not an enjoyable book until I was halfway through, but if you are an Izzard fan, give it a shot, but don’t say that I did not warn you.