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Blind hatred >> Jim Knipfel discovers the healing power of cynicism by JULIET WATERS
Then again, I shouldn't really be making fun of the poor P.R. people, since the other night I was trying to describe this book to someone and suddenly I felt like I'd been struck by a terrible case of brain paralysis. Here's me trying to summarize it: "It's a true story about this guy who writes for the New York Press. He's really cynical and he has this hereditary disease, so he's going blind and also he has a brain lesion that's making him angry and suicidal. He was a philosophy major in university and a grad school drop-out, so he has no job skills... Also he's an alcoholic... And his wife has left him... So it's weird, because when he goes blind it's almost like a happy ending... Because... Uh... It's really funny... And..." I trail off as I register the blank expression in front of me. As a result of this experience, I am forced to concede that Slackjaw has defied my limited book reviewing skills. So, I'm going to totally cheat and quote the review that led me to open it, and hope that somebody out there gets this the same way I did. William Monahan writes: "Most writers survive circumstances that would have killed a lesser person, but Knipfel's survived things that would have destroyed a civilization. Blindness, poverty, idiot social workers and rage seizures aside, the worst of it was probably going to college in the '80s." If you're too young to know what it was like to be a young adult with a brain in the '80s, imagine this: you care about things, you want to be passionate about the world, but what lies ahead of you is a decade of Reaganomics, staggering social apathy and graduate schools that are churning out people who, to a lucid person, seem to be babbling nonsense. When they do make sense, what they seem to be saying is: "We've just figured out that our humanist society is just a big illusion, and there's not much that can be done about it. Those of you with an amazing talent for bullshit can compete like trained vicious weasels for a few tenured positions. The rest of you will be here teaching intro courses to mostly commerce students for shit pay. But there'll always be the wine and cheese parties." Even though this book is about a young man going blind, only a very small portion of Slackjaw is actually about Knipfel losing his sight. It's really more the story of someone going psychically numb in such a way that actual blindness and madness seems like an appropriate subtext. The person who probably saved Knipfel's life was the cheap grad-student therapist he spent a couple of months talking to after a failed suicide attempt. "'Jim,' he said, 'you are not a terrible person. But the world is a terrible, horrible place. What you've got to do is take all that rage and all that hatred inside you and turn it around. You've got to stop trying to destroy yourself. Turn that rage outward. Go out and try and destroy the world instead.'" It would be nice to say that as soon as someone gave Knipfel permission to unleash his repressed hatred on the world, everything was okay. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There's a big price to pay for the healing power of hatred. This is not a hard book to read; in fact, it's very easy. But to describe, understand and empathize with, that's another matter. Slackjaw by Jim Knipfel, Tarcher/Putnam, hc, 235pp, $32.99
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I can see now why Jim Knipfel's publishers have plastered the rave review he received from Thomas Pynchon all over the cover of Slackjaw. Without it, this book would be an incredibly hard sell. The lame dustcover pitch doesn't help: "Slackjaw is a darkly comic and inspiring narrative. It is an enthralling confessional about enduring, even laughing, in a world where seemingly nothing goes right."