I found myself wondering throughout the text; exactly how brain damaged is this man? He is clearly articulate. His writing has structure, order, discipline and a “so what?” at the end. And it’s a good read. It is obvious to me that he has done extended research in his quest for finished polished prose. Once or twice I reached for my OED to check the exact meaning of a word only to discover entirely new layers and nuances to the writing in front of me.

So, how damaged is he? How long would it take me to write an essay in which I seemingly knew all the layers of all in my word/metaphor choices? Eleven months suddenly doesn’t look too long. I knew Whirlaway was a Triple Crown winner, I knew he had been jockeyed by Eddie Arcaro (the only jockey in history to win 2 triple crowns, which is why I know that) – but – it takes some serious research to find the horse that was both a champion and clumsy. Did he just happen on that? Luck? Is he more careful because of his perceived defect? Who does his fact checking? Would I have done the research to discover the particulars about this horse? Did he know them? The amazing nuance here makes it seems likely that he did, makes us want to believe he did. But there have only been eleven Triple Crown winners and Whirlaway sounds fast, certainly faster than say, Sir Barton (1919) or Citation (1948) and that might have been enough for him. I don’t know.

I found myself wanting more concrete evidence about his disability because it wasn’t palpable in the prose (beyond the first section, “Gray Matter”). Had I not been routinely reminded that the author was brain damaged I would not have known throughout the majority of the essays in the text. What sort of virus did he contract? How does he know it was contracted on an airplane? Does it have a name? If so, why is that name not provided to the reader? My daughter was in the hospital, in ICU with a random un-named virus that had attacked her. I was reading this book at her bedside. She had a high fever, violent headaches and was very disoriented. It was very random and frightening. It made reading this text very challenging for me – but it also led me to questions about his disability that I perhaps would not have otherwise thought about. As I read “What is This and What Do I Do With It?” and my daughter was asking me why her soup was so cold – her soup that was in reality lime sherbet I wanted to know about his loss of cognitive capacity.

Skloot quoted reference upon reference and he did so very eloquently – but gave me nothing personal in the way of his own medical condition. None of his doctors were quoted (with the exception of the SSI psychiatrist). I have learned a lot about random viruses that attack us in the last three weeks and wanted the author to provide me with something more specific to his condition—not broad generalities quoted from Harvard professors and vague references to failed drug studies.

Despite all this I found myself engaged in his story and this led me to wonder what else has he published? So I did some checking and surprisingly all but one of his seventeen books came out after the onset of his illness. I am curious to read the book published prior to his illness (Kaleidoscope, 1986) to see if I can detect any sort of radical changes in his style or subject matter. I think before I can judge the “wisdom” of this book I would need to see other things. I need to know did his wisdom (a word I use very guardedly) come from revelations about himself through his illness as he suggests or are his truths what they have always been and now that he has lost his immortality (a place we all reach eventually) he feels compelled to commit them to a print. ( )

Collection of essays that add up to a memoir. Skloot was struck down by a virus that attacked his brain in 1988, when he was 41. He's been disabled with brain damage ever since. He was a poet and novelist before 1988, with a day job in government. Since being disabled he's continued to write, but very slowly. I saw him read his poetry at Wordstock last year, enjoyed it, and picked up this book. His story is extraordinary, and beautifully written.

amazing ( )