Evan Handler, perhaps best known as Harry Goldenblatt, the short, shiny-headed lawyer for whom Sex and the City's uptown Charlotte went Jewish, is seeing more action these days than he ever did on a show with sex in the title.

As Charlie Runkle, literary agent to David Duchovny's Hank Moody on Showtime's hit series Californication, Handler does his fair share of walking on the wild side. You might call his antics cautionary tales: Teaming up with your client for a threesome can be a terrible idea. Nipple clamps? Not unless you want to end up in the emergency room. And even if you think no one is watching, you should limit your solo activities at the office.

Handler, who on Tuesday kicks off the David Posnack Jewish Community Center's 21st annual Jewish Book Festival in Davie with a reading from his second book, It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive (Riverhead, $25), would have never predicted he'd be having so much fun at 47.

''I like pushing the envelope,'' says Handler, whose character loses his power gig this season because of his bad-boy ways and is reduced to negotiating better contracts for a porn actress. ''Things are going to get worse. But there's a very tender storyline between me and the porn actress. In Californication there may be cringe-worthy moments, but they are in the service of very funny storylines,'' he says from his home in Los Angeles.

GRIM DIAGNOSIS

Handler wasn't supposed to make it past 20-something. At 24, while he was in a Broadway run of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The condition was supposed to be incurable.

In his first book, Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors, published in 1996, Handler detailed his journey through diagnosis, treatment and recovery and the serious growing up he had to do in order to deal with a medical system that tried to push him around. Bestselling novelist Amy Tan called it ``a visceral knockout of a book, a Kafkaesque Saturday Night Live version of negotiating for your life.''

But as Handler admits in It's Only Temporary, there was still a lot more maturing needed after he realized he would be sticking around. He knew he was lucky just to be alive, but he was flailing and felt unfulfilled just the same.

''I wanted to talk about how perspective requires the privilege of time, which I was lucky enough to have,'' Handler says. 'This book tells the story of a guy who is reduced in his 20s to being a dying young man. And later winds up trying to relive his 20s in his 30s. He's a guy who emerged not knowing how to live his life, thinking, `I should grab everything I can as quickly as I can.' ''

HAPPY RESULTS

A lot of dating drama resulted.

''Failed romances are a really good metaphor for not being able to trust in the future,'' says Handler, who in 2003 married Italian-born Elisa Atti. They have a baby daughter, Sofia, and Handler says his family has brought him to the best place of his life. But before that, he was more than romantically challenged.

``There were a lot of stumbles and bumbles, all kinds of permutations. There were my 27 breakups, involving 10 women.''

Looking back, however, he's glad he got all his dating dysfunctions out of his system before he met Atti, a medical scientist.

'All of those regret-filled mistakes, upon meeting my wife, became savvy choices. I didn't get married until I was 42. It came up a lot at family gatherings. But now they say, `She was well worth the wait.' Now it's clever and savvy that I held out that long. A lot of it had to do with change in myself. Early in my relationship with my wife, she became very jealous. At another time in my life, I would have run. But this time I had the maturity to stick around and to say, 'If you really love this woman, this is an area where she needs your help and your patience.' ''

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@