Evan Handler, the actor best known for his role as Harry on Sex and the City, has published a second memoir, It’s Only Temporary, and he chats with mediabistro.com’s Melissa Walker about why he’s dipping into that well again:

“Surviving a supposedly ‘incurable’ illness, yet still finding fault with how unnecessarily difficult it was made [as (Time on Fire) tells], is obviously an interesting story. I found equal intrigue and surprise in how difficult it was to keep those experiences from informing my life for years after I was declared cured, and how long it took me to find consistent contentment in the life I knew I was lucky just to be living. I lived my life backwards. In my 20s, when most are experiencing young adulthood, I was reduced to the state of a dying old man. Then, I lived my 20s in my 30s—which made for some comedic and embarrassing adventures. I swung drastically and repeatedly between two choices: live for the moment vs. invest in the future. With the new book, my humiliations become the reader’s entertainment.”

He also talks about what it’s like promoting a book as “someone whose image would be recognized favorably by about 10 million people… yet almost none of them know I’ve published a book in the past, or have a new one coming—and that’s in spite of a large number of articles already having been written about me.”

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $49 (until the rates go up next week!), and start reading those articles, receive discounts on mediabistro.com seminars and workshops, and receive all sorts of other bonuses.

(photo: Jim Spellman/WireImage.com)