I Read Alex Trebek’s ‘The Answer Is…’.

This was such a quick and easy read, one that I had received as a Christmas gift last year. I got it just as the pandemic was becoming something that we could move away from, and also a couple of months after his passing. I didn’t know much about Alex Trebek other than he was Canadian, he had played hockey and that he was the host of a show that I’d been watching semi-regularly since I was a child.

I liked that this wasn’t a biography and openly didn’t mean to be in the first place. This acts as a work of brevity, a memoir broken up into very digestible and bite-sized parts, each of them themed to a certain portion of what Alex wanted to talk about at that given time. He speaks on celebrity, on health, on people he’s met, on the contestants and obviously on so much more. The thing about this book is that it feels very heartfelt in its simplicity. Trebek doesn’t come across as the deep well of knowledge that he comes across as during his screen time on Jeopardy!. He doesn’t come across as pretentious or even famous. The closest comparison I can draw in this book is that it reads like a journal written by my father, but written in complete silence and solitude, speaking simply and with language meant to impress no one.

It’s clearly written with some intention of humor on Alex’s part and in this book’s authenticity, I love that a lot of the jokes don’t necessarily land. Lots of the moments are him retelling jokes or quips that you mostly had to be there for and he will add something so succinct and humorless like, “boy did that get a laugh.” As a long-time viewer, I would always cringe at his attempts at humor with contestants, but as I mentioned, there is a paternal sense of wellness and good-intention with so much of his dialog. In that, it is engaging and uplifting.

One thing that I enjoyed most about his book was his core humility and mostly a blue collar attitude about work, about the world he lived in, about his relationships and about his home. He seemed to always crave simplicity. Even when he came to L.A., he mentions his first interaction with ‘hash brownies’ and you can sort of get an idea about what stardom meant to him. He was proud of his achievements, sure. He put a lot of work into making it where he was, and lots of the ways in which he arrived came from his own elbow grease and his own interviewing and innovations in ways to allow himself to arrive and exist on sets that initially didn’t have a place for him. This above all, is what I took from his book. he has a quote in there that refers very specifically to show business, and celebrity in general, but I think it’s applicable to all of our jobs, though there are interchangeable bothers and commitments:

“If I accept a job, I will do it to the best of my ability. Even if I wake up one day and don’t feel like doing it. I believe that should be the way all people should handle themselves with regard to work. If you don’t want to do interviews, if you don’t want to sign autographs, don’t accept the job, but once you do accept it, you owe people your best performance, your best effort. So get past your ego and just be there for the people. I don’t consider it a big deal.”

This is a super simple read and it does impart some solid knowledge and input from a guy who I have had on my television since I was single digits in age. That being said, I don’t necessarily recommend seeking this one out as the read is a bit too simple and the content can come across as a bit dry for long stretches. Not that I seek this stuff out, but we don’t see too much “behind the curtain” and we don’t get anything out of the words that we didn’t already know. The lack of mudslinging is really a relief, though. This is just, overall, a nice read.