Quick Take
- Narration: Shatner narrates his own memoir and that self-narration is half the experience, his instinctive comic timing and self-interruptions make this feel like a long conversation with the man himself.
- Themes: Career reinvention, the trap of iconic roles, resilience and risk-taking in show business
- Mood: Warm, digressive, and genuinely funny with unexpected patches of real sadness
- Verdict: Shatner’s memoir works best as an audio experience precisely because his voice carries all the contradictions the text describes, this is one of those rare cases where the narrator is the whole argument.
I put this one on during a Sunday afternoon drive to nowhere in particular, which turned out to be exactly the right conditions for William Shatner narrating his own life. By the time I had circled back to my neighborhood, I had stayed in the car for another twenty minutes in the driveway because he was in the middle of the Twilight Zone story and I was not going to interrupt it.
Up Till Now covers nearly six decades of one of the strangest careers in American entertainment. Not strange in a scandalous sense, though there are plenty of anecdotes that would qualify, but strange in the sense of genuinely improbable. Here is a classically trained Canadian theater actor who turned down a five-year MGM contract, starred in what may be history’s only all-Esperanto-language film, spent a period of his career living out of his truck with his dog, and then became a global pop cultural icon so recognizable that he is identified by a character name rather than his own.
The Problem and Gift of Captain Kirk
The central tension of this memoir is one that Shatner is more self-aware about than the book’s playful tone might initially suggest. Star Trek made him, and Star Trek also nailed him, to use the framing from an authorized Roddenberry biography that one reviewer cites. The argument is that had Trek not happened, Shatner might have built the kind of career that Clint Eastwood built, a serious, evolving body of work rather than a single indelible role. Shatner does not frame it quite that way himself, because he is constitutionally disinclined to grievance, but the tension is there in every anecdote about the roles he took and the projects he pursued in between the franchise installments.
What saves the book from nostalgia is Shatner’s genuine curiosity about his own career. He is not defensive about the choices that look odd in retrospect, and he is not falsely modest about the moments of real achievement. The Boston Legal chapter, for instance, treats that late-career renaissance with the same interested attention he gives to the early Shakespeare work in Stratford. That absence of hierarchy, treating every job as worth understanding rather than ranking some as serious and others as commercial compromises, gives the memoir a generosity that is genuinely appealing and that keeps the long runtime from ever feeling like self-congratulation.
The Self-Interruptions and What They Tell You
One reviewer flagged that Shatner’s own interruptions sometimes destroy the flow of a good story. That is accurate, and it is also the most revealing thing about the audiobook as an experience. Reading Shatner’s text on the page, those digressions might feel like bad editing. Hearing him perform them, you understand that this is simply how the man thinks, associatively, with one story pulling another to the surface before the first one has resolved. The narration is not polished autobiography; it is a man doing a long, live-recorded reminiscence, and once you adjust to that rhythm, it becomes charming rather than frustrating. The format rewards patience.
The moments of real sadness, the section on the death of his wife is mentioned in multiple reviews as unexpectedly moving, land harder in audio than they would on the page precisely because you have been laughing for the previous three chapters. Shatner does not play those moments for pathos. He is brief, almost matter-of-fact, and that restraint is more affecting than extended reflection would have been. It tells you something about the man that the most difficult passages of his life get the fewest words.
Ten Hours With an Unreliable Narrator Who Is Also the Subject
At ten hours and forty-five minutes, this is a substantial listen, and there are stretches where the book earns that one-reviewer characterization of flawed but irresistible. The coverage of the years between Star Trek’s cancellation and its revival as a film franchise is particularly strong, this is where the living-in-a-truck period happens, and where the gap between the cultural image and the actual financial and professional reality of Shatner’s life during that stretch becomes most visible. The contrast between how the public saw Captain Kirk and how the actor was actually living is where the memoir finds its real subject.
The book works best for listeners who come in with some prior investment in Shatner’s career, either through Trek or through Boston Legal. Cold listeners might find the early chapters require more patience before the rhythm establishes itself. But for anyone who has ever wondered what it actually costs to be that specific kind of famous, and what it looks like when someone has genuinely made peace with the answer, this memoir delivers an honest and frequently hilarious account.
Who This Is For, and Who Will Find It Maddening
Listen if you have any warmth toward Shatner’s career, or if you are curious about what six decades of working in American entertainment looks like from the inside, including the unglamorous parts. The self-narration is essential to the experience, do not consider a text version. Skip if you need narrative discipline; the book meanders, and it is built for people who enjoy that kind of meandering. Listeners looking for a linear career retrospective with clear analytical through-lines will find it maddening. Those who find a voice that sounds like it is making everything up as it goes to be precisely what they want will find ten hours insufficient.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Shatner address his complicated relationships with other Star Trek cast members?
He touches on cast dynamics but does not dwell on them at length. The memoir is more focused on his career arc and personal life than on resolving old feuds, which may disappoint listeners specifically looking for direct engagement with the well-documented tensions on set.
Is the audiobook abridged?
The version narrated by Shatner runs approximately ten hours and forty-five minutes in its full form. Earlier CD editions were abridged to around five hours, so confirm you are listening to the unabridged version if completeness matters to you.
How does Shatner handle the death of his wife Nerine in the memoir?
Multiple reviewers describe that section as unexpectedly moving. Shatner treats it with brevity and restraint rather than extended reflection, and that restraint makes the emotional impact stronger in audio form than it might be on the page.
Is this memoir appropriate for someone who is not a Star Trek fan?
Yes, though some familiarity with Shatner’s career helps. The book covers far more than Trek, his early theater work, his Twilight Zone years, T.J. Hooker, Boston Legal, and the stranger corners of his filmography. Listeners with no Trek attachment can still find plenty to engage with.
