SLACKJAW

Illuminating memoirs of an idiosyncratic young man whose black humor enables him to view his blindness as “just one more float in the weirdness parade” of life. Born with retinitis pigmentosa, Knipfel has been losing his sight since birth. What he has not lost is his sense of the absurd. A philosophy major with a penchant for anarchist politics, petty pilfering, and punk rock, he was asked to leave graduate school by a department head who objected to his free-wheeling lifestyle. To support himself, he has sold his blood plasma, clerked in a used-book store, written a newspaper column (called “Slackjaw,” an unflattering nickname he acquired in college), and been a guard at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and a receptionist at the New York Press, a Manhattan weekly that acquired his “Slackjaw” column from the Philadelphia Welcomat. Most of Knipfel’s memoirs focus on his dozen or so post-college years, a time when his marriage was failing, his visual field was shrinking, and an iate commission for the blind. This is one account of the work done by the Lighthouse and assorted other agencies for the blind that isn—t likely to be featured in their promotional brochures. Knipfel’s eyesight may have failed him, but his vision of the world is ever sharp and wickedly funny.