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"Mike Feder spent his childhood caring for his mentally ill mother by telling her stories about a world she was too fragile to explore herself. From then on, the darkness of insanity and the connective power of storytelling would form the poles of his life.".
"Feder learned, as the host of his own radio show, to exorcise his demons through storytelling and performance. His favorite topics: his own ridiculous jobs, failed marriage, psychiatrists, and reluctant fatherhood. Feder tackles all of that here, and takes the reader on a journey from the inside of a mental institution, where he learned that he was not as crazy as he thought, to inside radical radio at WBAI (Pacifica) in the '60s, when the whole world seemed to go insane.
He describes his success as a monologuist, after being the subject of a front-page New York Times feature, and the downside of that success, the awkward Hollywood schmooze-fests and grandiose expectations which left him feeling more alienated than before."--BOOK JACKET.
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The talking cure: a memoir of life on air
2001, Seven Stories Press
in English
- A Seven Stories Press 1st ed.
1583220410 9781583220412
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Work Description
As a kid growing up in Queens, Mike Feder identified with Scheherazade of The Thousand and One Nights: "The idea of someone having to tell a new tale every night to prevent their head getting chopped off seemed sadly familiar to me."Back then, the author's audience was his mentally ill mother, who used to stay in the house all day with the shades drawn, and then insist that her son tell her stories so that she might vicariously experience the world outside. Eventually she committed suicide, and Feder grew up to be a relentless, comic storyteller on the radio. The Talking Cure tells the story of his ridiculous jobs, first failed marriage, the string of psychiatrists, and the misery of reluctant fatherhood; throughout he maintains a kind of bizarre balancing act--hilariousness and deep seriousness, conventionality and strangeness. An ironist and a comic, Feder looks unflinchingly at his own foibles and frailties, enabling him to connect to other people's stories.The reader emerges from this book with a sense of forgiveness for the human condition, and awe at the mystery of human life. Deeply funny, and at the same time breathtakingly dark, this is a book to provoke, amuse and, in some strange way, reassure: God loves a challenge.
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