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It wasn't until he was in his early twenties that doctors discovered that Jim Knipfel's nearsightedness was the result of an untreatable rare genetic eye disease known as retinitis pigmentosa, which, they said, would leave him blind within a few short years. Furthermore, he was informed, it was an inoperable brain lesion that was causing the suicidal depression and emotional free-for-all he was experiencing.
Add to that a drinking problem, a marriage on the rocks, and a lack of any obvious job skills, and you have a young man on the fast track toward oblivion.
In an unpredictable, swift-paced, and stirring memoir, Knipfel maintains his absurdist perspective in recalling a life overrun with troubles of every variety. Along the way he introduces us to neurologists, newspaper editors, murderous punk rockers, optometrists, bartenders, petty thieves, genies, social workers, and friends and family who look on as an innocent young man from the Midwest is driven helplessly mad and becomes incurably blind.
It is an enthralling confessional about enduring, even laughing, in a world where seemingly nothing goes right, for anyone.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Retinitis pigmentosa, Health, Patients, Biography, Authors, biography, Blind, biography, Humor, general, Wit and humorPeople
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Originally published: New York : Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, c1999.
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First Sentence
""SUICIDE HOTLINE?" the chipper young woman on the other end of the phone seemed to ask me when she answered."
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- Created February 18, 2009
- 9 revisions
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October 8, 2017 | Edited by MARC Bot | merge duplicate works of 'Slackjaw' |
August 12, 2011 | Edited by ImportBot | add ia_box_id to scanned books |
May 6, 2011 | Edited by ImportBot | Added new cover |
May 6, 2011 | Edited by ImportBot | Found a matching Internet Archive item record |
February 18, 2009 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from San Francisco Public Library record |