The popular Dixie wisecracker is back this year—not with his usual mixed bag of grumpy newspaper columns but, along with fervent thanks for continued life, a complete account of his latest and scariest illness. Grizzard (b. 1946) lay hospitalized for 27 days in a coma, near death, after major rearranging of his vital giblets. Out of his coma with no apparent brain damage, he reports on how he got into such a parlous state; how he barely survived; and how much his pals and fans love him. This a personal story with a vengeance. We've heard about Grizzard's faulty ticker before, of course, but not since Prof. Irving S. Cobb perfected the genre several generations ago have there been such sustained carryings-on about tubes and catheters, blood and guts. Advancing the art, Grizzard fearlessly discusses his testicles (his privates peek out from those hospital gowns), his dreams, his golf-club memberships, and his hemorrhoids. He mentions ``limbaughsectomies (putting good sense into the head of a liberal)''; provides a joke about spinsters; and offers a song about absent friends. For his devoted fans, it's pure Gizzard—inside and out, heart and soul—slick and sometimes funny. It's easy reading, as usual, and it flows like healthy body fluids. Reminiscent of Cobb's account of a drawing of a party ``whose stomach was sliced four ways, like a twenty-cent pie, and then folded back neatly, thus exposing his entire interior arrangement to the gaze of the casual observer.'' No illustrations, praise the Lord. (First printing of 150,000)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-43125-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing work of new ideas on the cutting edge of biology, though not for the uninitiated.
Lavishly illustrated examination of the theory of biological self-organization—territory unfamiliar to most.
The theory of self-organization is an attempt to answer the continuing and ancient question of how the organism develops from a solitary fertilized egg to achieve its final form in maturity. Pivar believes that biology as a discipline has no overarching theoretical principle to explain the process of ontological development. He begins with a detailed description of the tensile strength of the toroidal sphere and how that funnel bi-layer shape is an ideal flexible vessel designed to facilitate the progression from single cell to full-fledged organism. He posits that the specific pattern of development of the species is already encoded at the cellular level and elaborated through physical and chemical dynamic processes. While the genome can specify certain traits of the animal, it cannot account for the process of the developmental sequence of the emerging biological form. In a similar vein, he rejects the principle of random mutation or natural selection precisely because these Darwinian concepts stress the crucial input of the environment in promoting adaptive evolutionary change along a continuum. He describes and illustrates the developmental sequence of flora and fauna from the basic toroidal sphere, stating that every life form grows from the same hypothesized point of origin as the inner layer undergoes continuous embryological transformation that is specific to each animal, flower or insect. The presentation of the biological self-organization theory, unorthodox at best since it minimizes accepted doctrines in biology, is highly disorganized. By immediately discussing and defining the mechanical properties of the torus and more specifically the toroidal sphere, Pivar is launching the reader into highly unfamiliar–and often disorienting–territory, a situation worsened by liberal use of terminology that is discipline-dependent. It is only in the concluding chapters that the relation of the torus principle to ontological and philological development is clarified.
An intriguing work of new ideas on the cutting edge of biology, though not for the uninitiated.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9749860-0-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative...
A slightly out-of-focus, harrowing account of recovery from what a doctor called “horrific” injuries sustained in a 1997 Toronto motorcycle wreck.
Describing in the third person the days of his long coma, he notes the efforts of his family and friends to remain with him 24/7, attempting to keep him mentally and physically stimulated. Aquan-Assee then downshifts into a slow-motion first person account of his own frustrating efforts to regain physical and mental focus, fighting back memory loss and struggling to remember people’s names from one second to the next. Neither angle is entirely satisfactory to particularize what surely was a long and arduous battle by the 29-year-old to pull himself back, often by the fingernails, into a world in which he felt increasingly out of touch. For instance, he slides past crucial moments when doctors encouraged his family to “pull the plug,” and their subsequent refusal to do so, even when his life signs were little more than flickers. It would have been helpful to know the thoughts and emotions of his parents and siblings at those precious turning points, as well as the doctors’ reactions to his subsequent recovery–a feat admirably accomplished in spite of their negative proclamations regarding the prospects for his “quality of life.” These are the hot-button issues crying out for greater attention throughout. But Aquan-Assee’s focus remains narrow, limiting the potential audience.
There are many universal, compelling issues left unexplored, but Aquan-Assee’s recovery and construction of the narrative are triumph enough.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-973-2782-0-X
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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