An astute, if sometimes-undisciplined, remembrance.
A personal memoir recounts a young man’s battle with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as the drugs he used to tame it.
Debut author Robinson attended the prestigious Ranney School in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, but started to experience academic trouble in the fifth grade. He perennially questioned his own intelligence, and although he tested well, he was beset by the anger, frustration, and self-recrimination that resulted from chronic underperformance. The author was eventually diagnosed with ADHD, and while he was at Tulane University, he says, he was introduced to Adderall by his girlfriend. Robinson had already sought a reprieve from chronic restlessness in alcohol with predictably unspectacular results, and Adderall, he felt, was like a miracle—and he became woefully dependent upon it. But even after he confessed to his therapist that he’d developed an addiction, he was prescribed it yet again. After he manically pledged to go on a hunger strike to protest American troops in Iraq, his father called paramedics to have him hospitalized. Later, the author would wrestle with another drug problem, this time with Ritalin, after a failed attempt to get a show produced in Hollywood. Robinson finally repaired his life, learned to manage his ADHD, started his own debt-settlement business, and got married. Although this book is principally a memoir, the author also discusses his reservations about the psychiatric community’s reliance on medication to treat cognitive disorders, as well as the American educational system’s failure to accommodate the needs of afflicted students. Robinson’s remembrance is an intimate one, brimming with courageous candor and bracing self-critique. He intelligently describes the alienation he felt, due to his condition: he was mortified by his underachievement and envied “neurotypicals.” What emerges is a poignant self-portrait of a rather young man (he was 23 years old when he wrote this book) who’s exceedingly talented but just as angry—not just about his condition, but also at the lack of resources available to assist those who have it. A philosophy major in college, Robinson is accustomed to plumbing the depths of meaning in life, and he often does so with charm and verve. Problematically, though, the prose can be clumsy and leaden, with real insights buried in interminable sentences, often marred with mistakes: “In the utilitarian point of view of our nation’s school system, the education that maximizes the number of students who benefit from a curriculum geared toward the predominant a [sic] learning style are ultimately responsible for minimizing the potential of students with different cognitive styles.” Also, the author’s youthful spiritedness can also come across as callowness at times; he’s peremptorily dismissive of religion and too often describes traditional education as an exercise in herd-mentality brainwashing. Further, while his criticisms of higher education and psychiatry are trenchant, he offers little in the way of substantive alternatives. One may forgive Robinson for such unripe reflections, given his age, but it’s also hard not to hope for a more seasoned sequel further down the line.
An astute, if sometimes-undisciplined, remembrance.Pub Date: July 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63393-431-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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