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Slackjaw
The author describes his battle with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare and untreatable genetic disease that results in blindness, and an inoperable brain leasion, in a memoir that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
August 8, 2018
”Why do I need my eyes more than another?
It seems to me they never focused anything.
I console myself purely and simply with the thought.
---Samuel Beckett
I had read about twenty pages of this book when I decided to google the writer to see if he was still alive. I was relieved to discover he is still with the living. For some, that might seem like reading the ending before finishing the book, but for me, it was more about being able to focus on the subtext, knowing that the answers were probably hidden in there instead of in the actual prose, if in fact he did...you know...off himself.
Jim Knipfel is going blind. He has a degenerative disease. ”RETINITIS PIGMENTOSA is not as deadly as AIDS, or as painful as cancer, or as crippling as a stroke. It doesn’t hurt at all. It only leaves you blind. I will still be able to walk and talk; I won’t have to be hospitalized for it unless I run into another lamppost or a moving bus. But it is insidious, and it is frightening.”
I read this book with more lurking fear than just wondering if Knipfel would be able to make the transition from being just depressed in general, to depressed and blind, to depressed, blind, and old. ( Newsflash: there are so many more things to be depressed about as we get older.) I received my first pair of glasses when I was 5 years old. I probably needed them sooner, but that was the age when I was launched from the rock house on the farm to the world of other little people...kindergarten. I dreaded going to the optometrist as much as most people dread going to the dentist. I knew it was going to be bad news everytime, and every time I emerged with a thicker pair of spectacles, balanced like a lead weight on my nose.
This made me very popular with the other kids. #thatwouldbesarcasm
My one question for the optometrist with each visit was,...am I going to go blind?
There is no sugar coating for Knipfel. He is going to go legally blind, and there is no way to know when exactly that will happen. That would be the insidiousness nature of the disease. Not knowing, each time he wakes up, how much further the disease has progressed.
Knipfel writes this column for various newspapers throughout his life called Slackjaw, in which he discusses his life, making his way around the city, but also his ongoing battle with the onset of blindness. These columns, in many ways, reflect the best advice he ever got from a psychologist. ”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 that’s inside of you and turn it around. You’ve got to stop trying to destroy yourself. Turn the rage outward, go out and try to destroy the world instead.”
I do think most of us do a pretty good job of punishing ourselves for what the world does to us. We turn that rage inward instead of outward. We feel helpless when we should be seeking vindication. Now obviously, for all those terrorists and suicide bombers who read my reviews, he isn’t advocating violence against the world. He is merely suggesting that Jim focus the rage he feels into fighting back. The pen, as always, proves mightier than the sword.
He observes, fuzzy though it may be, and writes about the absurdity with brutal honesty. Of course, ever since there has been a written language and a way to distribute those words to a large group of people, there have been people annoyed by what they have read. We have become a nation of people with little tolerance for exposure to information that does not agree with our own opinions. We are seeing another huge insurrengence of this feeling at Trump rallies where he accuses the press of being “fake news.” Those Trumpsters are incited by POTUS to hate the whole news media. In the case of Knipfel, when he gets hate mail, it is a little more personal.
”In the last line, he informed me he would give me two weeks to live. It was a smart move on his part. Had he been threatening someone normal, he would’ve caused the person two weeks of panic and bowel trouble. I was frustrated that he was making me wait that long.”
For me, my odyssey with my eyes took a big turn at age 50 when my left eye went totally dark. The optometrist informed me that I had a massive cataract, a solar eclipse, and that soon my right eye, suffering from the same condition, would also slowly go dark. Surgery was the only option. One of the ironies of genetics is that my mother has extremely bad eyes like mine, and my father has 20/15 vision. Couldn’t I have at least come out somewhere more normal?
The other interesting aspect of my eyes is that they are perfectly healthy except for an extreme lengthening of the eyeball. There are no retinal detachments or other issues that optometrists are used to encountering with people with my horrible level of eyesight. For most people, getting a cataract so young would seem terrible, but in my case, it turned out to be more exciting than hitting the lottery. Right on my doorstep, 50 miles away, one of the best cataract eye doctors in the country has a practice. He was able to put new lenses in my eyes, and for the first time since I was four years old, I can see without the aid of glasses or contacts. One eye was set for more distance, and one eye was set for closer vision.
The surgery was more successful than anyone anticipated. I can see to read, and I can see the television with perfect clarity from across the room. There are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night and reach for nonexistent glasses. I can’t help smiling and chuckling as I make my way to the bathroom, unaided by anything but the blue glow of a nightlight.
Jim Knipfel
Unfortunately, Knipfel’s journey does not have the happy ending that mine has. There is always hope that technology will catch up with him as it did for me. In the meantime, I hope he keeps raging against the world and keeps sharing his “vision.” We need all the truthsayers we can get in the age of misdirection.
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August 22, 2007
Jim Knipfel is a madman. Legally blind, suicidally depressed, subject to manic rages, and funny as hell, Knipfel is unique in the annals of “living with disabilities” books. He avoids both of the major biographical no-nos: self-pity and dewy-eyed courage. Slackjaw takes no prisoners.
On the one hand, this is a fairly simple book: man going blind learns to deal with it. No big accident, no sudden trauma, just darkness slowly encroaching. After a middle-class childhood, Knipfel has his anarchistic, punk rock college years. He goes off to grad school (what else is a philosophy major to do?) where he supports himself as a petty thief (why didn’t I think of that?). Despite depression which occasionally spiraled into suicide attempts, he fell in love and moved to Philadelphia, where he began writing a column called “Slackjaw” for an alternative weekly called Welcomat. Eventually he and his wife moved to Brooklyn, Welcomat went under, and “Slackjaw” moved to the New York Press. He and his wife divorce, his vision worsens, and he has to learn to navigate New York City with a cane. That’s it: the book in a nutshell.
Ahh, but on the other hand, nothing about this book is simple. The writing is great: sharp, funny, angry, and evocative. Knipfel deals with big issues like mental illness and physical disability honestly, clearly, and with savage humor. There’s no room here for “Poor me, I’ve had a rough life,” or “yes, I suffer, but I suffer nobly.” Knipfel tells it like it is, and does a damn fine job of it.
Funny, sad, shocking, compelling—what more do you people need? Get thee to a bookstore and pick up Slackjaw, and take a gander at Knipfel’s other book, Quitting the Nairobi Trio, while you’re at it. It’s about his time in a mental hospital, and I can’t wait to hear his story.
On the one hand, this is a fairly simple book: man going blind learns to deal with it. No big accident, no sudden trauma, just darkness slowly encroaching. After a middle-class childhood, Knipfel has his anarchistic, punk rock college years. He goes off to grad school (what else is a philosophy major to do?) where he supports himself as a petty thief (why didn’t I think of that?). Despite depression which occasionally spiraled into suicide attempts, he fell in love and moved to Philadelphia, where he began writing a column called “Slackjaw” for an alternative weekly called Welcomat. Eventually he and his wife moved to Brooklyn, Welcomat went under, and “Slackjaw” moved to the New York Press. He and his wife divorce, his vision worsens, and he has to learn to navigate New York City with a cane. That’s it: the book in a nutshell.
Ahh, but on the other hand, nothing about this book is simple. The writing is great: sharp, funny, angry, and evocative. Knipfel deals with big issues like mental illness and physical disability honestly, clearly, and with savage humor. There’s no room here for “Poor me, I’ve had a rough life,” or “yes, I suffer, but I suffer nobly.” Knipfel tells it like it is, and does a damn fine job of it.
Funny, sad, shocking, compelling—what more do you people need? Get thee to a bookstore and pick up Slackjaw, and take a gander at Knipfel’s other book, Quitting the Nairobi Trio, while you’re at it. It’s about his time in a mental hospital, and I can’t wait to hear his story.
September 2, 2007
Why don't more people know about this book? I feel as though it's my mission to make sure my friends get to read it. If I were to tell you that brain lesions and retinitis pigmentosa were outrageously funny, you would think I was a pretty bad person (or, as I tell Charlie, that I was a person behaving badly). But, Jim Knipfel can get away with this, the blackest humor of all time, because he's been dealt the worst hand (? maybe not I guess) the universe could deal you. I've recommended this book to folks in EVERY walk of life you can imagine (as I'm still straddling parallel lives) and every person who's read it says that they cannot believe they hadn't heard about it before. This is a GREAT, GREAT book, and guys actually seem to like it even better than women.
September 15, 2017
I read this years ago but was reminded of it while reading the opening of Thomas Bernhard's The Loser although I don't know that the two books would have so much in common. I will say that where Cyrus Duffleman of Fight for Your Long Day smells the urine on the subway platform he is not only smelling the urine on the subway platform on behalf of adjunct faculty throughout Philadelphia, but he is also smelling it as Knipfel would have smelled it, his contemporary in the city of brotherly love, the city of brotherly urine would be accurate, if inappropriate, but it's also important to remember the mingling of fumes, the perfume, the strong perfume mingling with the pee, that under such pungent conditions, a ride on the 2 bus or El or Broad Street subway would invigorate, would make one come alive, indeed, create life, before Philadelphia became a cesspool of affluent majority whites moving in from suburbs and out from center city, so that the rich scents we grew up with were washed away as mayors decided it was better to have sidewalk seating outside restaurants than god-knows-what in the cracks and crevices of cement and asphalt streets. . .
October 5, 2020
This book is a peculiar treasure in memoir writing. Pynchon's right: rarely have I encountered a blurb capturing better the essence of its book:
"What begins as a cautionary tale turns out to be, after all, an exemplary American life."
Even more. What begins as a cautionary tale (i.e. about losing sight) turns out to be an exemplary coming-of-age (and beyond) story of an American life which further then turns out to be re-joining its cautionary tale, resulting in a tragedy. This tragedy is however not the outcome of some linear memoir plot; here, this tragedy is the given lenses through which everything (i.e. the tale of the life turning out to be a suck) is depicted and transformed - with some truly deranged sense of humour - into a comedy.
Something different than usual is going on in here. All reversed.
Very much recommended for everyone. I will now look into Knipfel's fiction.
"What begins as a cautionary tale turns out to be, after all, an exemplary American life."
Even more. What begins as a cautionary tale (i.e. about losing sight) turns out to be an exemplary coming-of-age (and beyond) story of an American life which further then turns out to be re-joining its cautionary tale, resulting in a tragedy. This tragedy is however not the outcome of some linear memoir plot; here, this tragedy is the given lenses through which everything (i.e. the tale of the life turning out to be a suck) is depicted and transformed - with some truly deranged sense of humour - into a comedy.
Something different than usual is going on in here. All reversed.
Very much recommended for everyone. I will now look into Knipfel's fiction.
October 12, 2007
This book was recommended to me by the supercool Ms. Tracy O., and good on her for it.
I'm going to compare Slackjaw to two books to which it seemingly has little in common, Oyama Shiro's A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer and A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley. Exley's book, of course, is the celebrated "fictional memoir" of a dreamy loser, a man who tried and failed and tried again to fit into some sort of conventional life; who worshiped and resented his classmate, the handsome football star Frank Gifford; and who sabotaged nearly every chance he had to be a success and yet wound up with a strange sort of tattered glory. Oyama Shiro's story is less well known, that of a man who rejects Japan's relentless pressure for conformity and achievement to be a solitary day laborer, with no future, no friends, nothing before him but the next job and the onset of old age and decay.
Like Exley and Oyama, Knipfer is a misfit. Like Exley, he is a spectacular misfit, someone who undermines nearly every chance he has to make good, gravitating to bars and weirdos when others sniff out boardrooms. Like Oyama, he is profoundly self-loathing, someone who almost begs to be smacked in the face by bad luck or evil design. But he differs in two important ways. The first is that fate has dealt him a bad hand; he has a ticking clock in the form of his increasing blindness; given that, who wouldn't be tempted to drop out, to curse the darkness? Second, unlike the others, Knipfer is sardonic, ironic, sarcastic, mean, intolerant--and very funny. Where Oyama is sometimes irritating with his abjection, and Exley nearly pitiable with his romantic tilting at windmills, Knipfer is clear-eyed, straightforward, and unromantic nearly to extremes. It makes for a bracing, fun read.
Oh, and there's a third difference. Like the others, Knipfer is a rebel and a self-exiled outcast. Unlike them, he goes blind. When you go blind, you have to depend on others. It makes you nicer. (It doesn't make you any less pointed or sarcastic or funny, thank God.) It makes you join in, if only a little. Jim Knipfer wasn't lucky to go blind. But, in its own strange way, it may have been a very good thing.
Recommended.
I'm going to compare Slackjaw to two books to which it seemingly has little in common, Oyama Shiro's A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer and A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley. Exley's book, of course, is the celebrated "fictional memoir" of a dreamy loser, a man who tried and failed and tried again to fit into some sort of conventional life; who worshiped and resented his classmate, the handsome football star Frank Gifford; and who sabotaged nearly every chance he had to be a success and yet wound up with a strange sort of tattered glory. Oyama Shiro's story is less well known, that of a man who rejects Japan's relentless pressure for conformity and achievement to be a solitary day laborer, with no future, no friends, nothing before him but the next job and the onset of old age and decay.
Like Exley and Oyama, Knipfer is a misfit. Like Exley, he is a spectacular misfit, someone who undermines nearly every chance he has to make good, gravitating to bars and weirdos when others sniff out boardrooms. Like Oyama, he is profoundly self-loathing, someone who almost begs to be smacked in the face by bad luck or evil design. But he differs in two important ways. The first is that fate has dealt him a bad hand; he has a ticking clock in the form of his increasing blindness; given that, who wouldn't be tempted to drop out, to curse the darkness? Second, unlike the others, Knipfer is sardonic, ironic, sarcastic, mean, intolerant--and very funny. Where Oyama is sometimes irritating with his abjection, and Exley nearly pitiable with his romantic tilting at windmills, Knipfer is clear-eyed, straightforward, and unromantic nearly to extremes. It makes for a bracing, fun read.
Oh, and there's a third difference. Like the others, Knipfer is a rebel and a self-exiled outcast. Unlike them, he goes blind. When you go blind, you have to depend on others. It makes you nicer. (It doesn't make you any less pointed or sarcastic or funny, thank God.) It makes you join in, if only a little. Jim Knipfer wasn't lucky to go blind. But, in its own strange way, it may have been a very good thing.
Recommended.
December 24, 2016
This is the first of Knipfel's books I've read, and I'm already looking forward to the others. He manages to combine extreme cynicism and hope (or maybe just persistence) in an insightful and compelling way. Any book that includes a passage like this has my attention: "I was discovering that people were much more interesting and attractive before they opened their mouths. Once they spoke, all such illusions of beauty, charisma, and intelligence vanished." The only reason I'm giving this 4 stars instead of 5 is because Knipfel has a tendency to begin describing a situation or event, then back up and provide context before continuing the event, a style I find distracting (and which he seemed to promise he wouldn't do in the introduction). Regardless, I think anyone who appreciates cynicism or sarcasm will find Knipfel's book highly satisfying.
January 17, 2009
First, I love memoirs. Second, the tone he establishes is wicked, charming, and sweet. His story of blindness is moving w/o cliche or blame.
October 30, 2024
"What I thought would be a story about one man's slow descent into blindness and how he adapted, turned out to be more of a story about his life, the poor decisions he made, the relationships he ruined and the abject misery that he struggled with, the blindness was more of an aside. I appreciated Knipfel's sardonic wit but his stubbornness and pride left him in a lot of unfortunate situations. He was a frustrating person to read about."
Pros: Knipfel's sardonic voice brings some levity to an otherwise tragic situation/I like that he was contrary from a young age, though at the same time, he made a lot of bad decisions that didn't help his situation any.
Cons: This book turned out to be more of a timeline of how Knipfel's poor decisions impacted his life, while he slowly went blind. The blindness felt like more of an afterthought/Knipfel's struggles with major depression and alcoholism were profound but he didn't really seem to want to get help with any of it, so, it's horrible to say but, a lot of the time when he would stumble into a catastrophic setback, it was of his own doing.
Full Review
From an early age, Jim Knipfel knew his eyes were bad. He just didn't know quite how bad they were. Or that by the time he was thirty, he would essentially be completely blind. He struggled from a very early age with depression and as he got older, alcoholism, which a lot of the times ended up with him in the hospital. Blackouts would lead to collapsing in the streets, seizures, bashing his head open on the sidewalk and going missing for three days, multiple suicide attempts. After awhile you would hope he'd put two and two together but he never seemed to manage to do so.
It took him a long time to even listen to his doctors and finally get a cane so he could move around more easily. It wasn't until the end of the book, after a life time of accidents, hospitalizations and overall, abject misery, that he finally did buy and learn how to use a cane. And it was with that realization, that wow, this cane makes things a lot easier, did he seem to start to realize that maybe, listening to the doctors, wasn't a bad idea.
There were points where I liked Knipfel's scathing wit but there were also times where he would find himself in bad situations and I just didn't feel sympathetic because, a lot of the time, they were situations of his own making. He wouldn't listen. He wouldn't accept help. He was too proud and too stubborn and he ended up pushing a lot of people away. I understand wanting to be independent but at the same time, it's not a weakness to ask and accept help sometimes.
Pros: Knipfel's sardonic voice brings some levity to an otherwise tragic situation/I like that he was contrary from a young age, though at the same time, he made a lot of bad decisions that didn't help his situation any.
Cons: This book turned out to be more of a timeline of how Knipfel's poor decisions impacted his life, while he slowly went blind. The blindness felt like more of an afterthought/Knipfel's struggles with major depression and alcoholism were profound but he didn't really seem to want to get help with any of it, so, it's horrible to say but, a lot of the time when he would stumble into a catastrophic setback, it was of his own doing.
Full Review
From an early age, Jim Knipfel knew his eyes were bad. He just didn't know quite how bad they were. Or that by the time he was thirty, he would essentially be completely blind. He struggled from a very early age with depression and as he got older, alcoholism, which a lot of the times ended up with him in the hospital. Blackouts would lead to collapsing in the streets, seizures, bashing his head open on the sidewalk and going missing for three days, multiple suicide attempts. After awhile you would hope he'd put two and two together but he never seemed to manage to do so.
It took him a long time to even listen to his doctors and finally get a cane so he could move around more easily. It wasn't until the end of the book, after a life time of accidents, hospitalizations and overall, abject misery, that he finally did buy and learn how to use a cane. And it was with that realization, that wow, this cane makes things a lot easier, did he seem to start to realize that maybe, listening to the doctors, wasn't a bad idea.
There were points where I liked Knipfel's scathing wit but there were also times where he would find himself in bad situations and I just didn't feel sympathetic because, a lot of the time, they were situations of his own making. He wouldn't listen. He wouldn't accept help. He was too proud and too stubborn and he ended up pushing a lot of people away. I understand wanting to be independent but at the same time, it's not a weakness to ask and accept help sometimes.
July 1, 2020
Knipfel jumps right into the madness, catapulting us through a botched suicide attempt in a raw, authentic, and shockingly hilarious display of prose. I was immediately drawn in and enthralled. From the very first page, Knipfel discernibly sets the tone and tempo for a fascinating tale of loss, derangement, hilarity, and coming to grips with a progressive disease while never waving the victim flag.
Over the course of the memoir, Knipfel navigates the reader through his many different phases of life utilizing eccentric and audacious storytelling. I was coerced into a strange appreciation for my life, no matter what personal challenges I have faced or may be in my path ahead. Then again, I found it selfishly comforting to feel as though more folks are just barely hanging in there than I might have suspected on a day to day basis - and Knipfel unabashedly made me feel as if I were not alone in that.
It was a fun little interesting read for me. I wasn’t overly excited to keep on turning the pages and I never really felt that strong pull to binge through chapters in search of what happens next. All in all, I enjoyed learning what life is like in someone else’s shoes - and, of course, I can always relate to a grumpy recluse that knows, from firsthand experience, the living definition of self-destruction.
Over the course of the memoir, Knipfel navigates the reader through his many different phases of life utilizing eccentric and audacious storytelling. I was coerced into a strange appreciation for my life, no matter what personal challenges I have faced or may be in my path ahead. Then again, I found it selfishly comforting to feel as though more folks are just barely hanging in there than I might have suspected on a day to day basis - and Knipfel unabashedly made me feel as if I were not alone in that.
It was a fun little interesting read for me. I wasn’t overly excited to keep on turning the pages and I never really felt that strong pull to binge through chapters in search of what happens next. All in all, I enjoyed learning what life is like in someone else’s shoes - and, of course, I can always relate to a grumpy recluse that knows, from firsthand experience, the living definition of self-destruction.
July 7, 2021
Just reread this the other week for the first time in a decade. There are old-testament-style prophet vibes this man gives off. Like a punk-rock Ezekiel.
I enjoyed everything I have read of his though I need to reread the buzzing before I review it. There is a darkness and dangerous honesty to Jim's observations and an honest sense of peace that overwhelms his world even when he is punching out windows.
This is more a short endorsement more than an in-depth review. if only because I really should be working on my own writing projects and I am almost certain no one reads or at least takes pleasure from me rambling on my favorite books. but if there is any interest I will expand this and be more specific. Heck, I may do that anyway if the mood strikes. all you really need to know though is Pynchon gave it a kind if not an outright glowing blurb. and all readers at this point in the century should know whether that is enough to give this book a read or not.
I enjoyed everything I have read of his though I need to reread the buzzing before I review it. There is a darkness and dangerous honesty to Jim's observations and an honest sense of peace that overwhelms his world even when he is punching out windows.
This is more a short endorsement more than an in-depth review. if only because I really should be working on my own writing projects and I am almost certain no one reads or at least takes pleasure from me rambling on my favorite books. but if there is any interest I will expand this and be more specific. Heck, I may do that anyway if the mood strikes. all you really need to know though is Pynchon gave it a kind if not an outright glowing blurb. and all readers at this point in the century should know whether that is enough to give this book a read or not.
August 12, 2020
I picked this book to read based on a review that it was 'positively infectious humor' and 'laugh out loud funny'. Lies. All lies. It's a memoir about a guy who has a degenerative eye disease that slowly causes him to go blind, along with a possible lesion on his brain and/or a seizure disorder of some sort. The lesion/disorder supposedly causes him to have 'rage seizures'. But really, this memoir is mostly about what an a-hole this guy is, a total slacker, a thief, a violent instigator, the worst employee, the worst husband, the worst cat owner etc etc etc. It seemed as though since he had health issues, he felt obligated to be the laziest, most rude and offensive person on the planet. It's not even the kind of writing that you hate him so much you end up enjoying the book.
October 5, 2025
While reading this book, at times I was annoyed by the author and his juvenile, destructive actions. The sections where he writes about his blindness were much more enjoyable to me. In fact, the RP diagnosis is why I borrowed the book from my library system. I gave this 4 stars because it is full of heart and I like his writing; he's sort of a cross between Chuck Palahniuk (bizarre, satanic) and David Sedaris (self-deprecating, raunchy). I was riveted during the last third of the book.
June 19, 2020
Ich liebe dieses Buch. Ein Autor, der aufgrund einer seltenen Augenkrankheit langsam erblindet und trotz Suizidgedanken und einiger Negativität seiner Erkrankung mit schwarzem Humor und Sarkasmus entgegentritt. Versehen mit vielen popkulturellen Einflüssen, die mir sehr gefallen haben, ist "Blindifsch" eine nette, teilweise traurige und dennoch immer launige Geschichte :).
July 22, 2025
this was an incredibly interesting read - i absolutely love reading memoirs from people with lives that look completely different from mine, and man, was this a doozy. i think the pacing at times lost me a little, but i truly was along for knipfel’s ride. this is a pretty solid 3.5 for me and would recommend if you’re looking for something edgier and different
January 11, 2021
I enjoyed this memoir about one man's experience of gradual blindness. It could be a downer in other hands, but Knipfel's dark humor and biting punk rock mindset make it instead a story of unlikely survival. A very unique voice.
January 21, 2018
I loved this book. A guy who’s going blind and keeps trying to commit suicide but manages somehow to keep me laughing at his antics, observances, and his general sense of humor.
January 21, 2011
What I noticed about the book was Jim Knipfel's deviation and sarcasm that was sure apparent throughout the story. He immediately shared to the readers his illness from the beginning of the story; a form of veer to the usual narrative that we often see today on usual "living with disabilities" novels. He hates self-pity and dewy-eyed courage so in a form of a prologue, (I think?) Jim tells us that he has Retinitis Pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that starts from having night blindness, tunnel vision then loosing their complete vision eventually. You can never imagine how a man like Jim had lived his life with such illness. He had a pretty normal childhood as far as I recalled. I even remember the time when Jim got totally addicted in donating blood on different blood charities. For some reason, he called it his replacement instead of taking drugs. Before he went to graduate school, he even had rebellious and anarchist years in college. Even had the opportunity to be a column writer in Philadelphia. The narrative of the story gradually moves from Jim's suburban neighborhood to the high streets of New York, from living with his deteriorating vision until finally encroaching in complete darkness.
What I truly love is in spite the dark undertone that is looming to take Jim, still he pursued life like no one else could have imagined. It sends a message that even though one is suffering with something doesn't exactly translates to a waste of a lifetime. Jim proved that regardless of his illness, he still lived life in a punk-rock, rebellious and comical way opposite to anyone who could have think of. The writing was sharp, evocative and filled with grim humor. Entertaining enough to make the readers flip the pages for what's going to happen next. Getting inspiration to a person that views life in a cynical and sardonic way is what makes Slackjaw stand out from the rest of the books that I encounter. A truly different one from your usual inspirational books out there. Probably why despite the span of time, I can still recall this funny, sad, shocking and compelling story of a mad man and his adventures.
What I truly love is in spite the dark undertone that is looming to take Jim, still he pursued life like no one else could have imagined. It sends a message that even though one is suffering with something doesn't exactly translates to a waste of a lifetime. Jim proved that regardless of his illness, he still lived life in a punk-rock, rebellious and comical way opposite to anyone who could have think of. The writing was sharp, evocative and filled with grim humor. Entertaining enough to make the readers flip the pages for what's going to happen next. Getting inspiration to a person that views life in a cynical and sardonic way is what makes Slackjaw stand out from the rest of the books that I encounter. A truly different one from your usual inspirational books out there. Probably why despite the span of time, I can still recall this funny, sad, shocking and compelling story of a mad man and his adventures.
April 13, 2008
This is a great quick read - I started it in the airport, waiting for my flight, and finished as we were taxiing up to the gate. Made the flight seem very short indeed.
Jim has hit the genetic jackpot - he has retinitis pigmentosa, which is causing him to go blind, and a lesion in his brain that is causing him to go mad. He recounts all of this with quite a lot of humor, although you get the definite impression it was more painful than he lets on. Punk rock, shoplifting, bar fights and general anarchy keep him going, and his disdain for the traditional blind subculture is funny stuff. Much funnier than you would expect from such dismal subject matter, it is a great quick read.
Jim has hit the genetic jackpot - he has retinitis pigmentosa, which is causing him to go blind, and a lesion in his brain that is causing him to go mad. He recounts all of this with quite a lot of humor, although you get the definite impression it was more painful than he lets on. Punk rock, shoplifting, bar fights and general anarchy keep him going, and his disdain for the traditional blind subculture is funny stuff. Much funnier than you would expect from such dismal subject matter, it is a great quick read.
April 30, 2012
This was a quick read, but many, many of the stories he tells have nothing to do with his struggle with blindness and a seizure disorder. They are just stories of really random encounters with strange people that left me scratching my head. It was not an "inspirational" story like some of the others I'd read as this guy is too bad ass to be inspirational.
Also, it was a little odd that he described his difficulty getting around in NYC with only being able to see light and dark shadows, but then describes a frustrating therapist with great detail including their facial expressions. Did he have a hidden camera and an interpreter to help him describe these people???
Also, it was a little odd that he described his difficulty getting around in NYC with only being able to see light and dark shadows, but then describes a frustrating therapist with great detail including their facial expressions. Did he have a hidden camera and an interpreter to help him describe these people???
July 31, 2022
I read this 25 years ago and gave it 5*. This time around I was less tolerant of Jim's behavior in high school and college. (alcohol abuse, shoplifting, vandalism and some thuggery) The sad, but intriguing part (to me) was the almost total incompetence of the medical community to properly diagnose and treat. Even later in the book when he's totally blind, the associations and community organizations who are specifically geared to assist and help the blind are ignorant hacks who seldom "listen" to their clients to get them what they really need. All in all, pretty depressing, but somehow Mr. Knipfel has survived and I wish him well.
January 29, 2008
This book was pretty interesting story of dealing with a strange and progressive illness. Definitley not on eof your uplifting and inspirign tales, but more the story of an embittered person doing the best he can to deal with the inevitable loss of his eyesight.
I give it a lower rating than I would otherwise have because, coming from Philadelphia, I see that he took great liberties with portaying how "tough" the areas he lived and worked in were. This makes me take some of the other thigns he has to say with a grain of salt.
I give it a lower rating than I would otherwise have because, coming from Philadelphia, I see that he took great liberties with portaying how "tough" the areas he lived and worked in were. This makes me take some of the other thigns he has to say with a grain of salt.
March 27, 2008
Who was it who said that serious matters must be seen from a comic point of view in order to be thoroughly understood? Jim Knipfel might know, or he might just as easily say that the idea is utter crap. His situation is-was a daily matter of life and death, and he makes plenty of mistakes, but this heartingly authentic autobiography of a young screw-up diseased writer proves that a punk rock perspective is the only way to deal with modern life. A lesson maybe, but Knipfel definitely wouldn't want it presented that way.
June 27, 2009
I suppose it would have been funnier if I had decided I actually LIKED Jim Knipfel (the author). However, he was too nihilist/angst-y/fucked-up/melodramatic for me to even respect him, much less like him. His childhood didn't seem bad, and yet, he decided to hate everyone and everything for absolutely no reason -- it's not like he was going blind and no one cared. Those people who give up on life aren't original... they're just fucking dull.
The first chapter was hilarious and then everything fell apart. Bleh.
The first chapter was hilarious and then everything fell apart. Bleh.
February 3, 2010
Well written and fairly interesting, but ultimately nothing shocking or new. I know that's kind of unfair to ask of a memoir, but what are you going to do? I was somewhat disappointed that what I thought was more the subject of the book - the author's experiences with his encroaching blindness - was more a subtle thematic ribbon through individual chapters of his life, instead of a more detailed exploration. My bad for going into the experience with an incorrect mindset, so no points off for that, heh.
July 1, 2011
Suicide attempts, a pesky brain lesion, and blindness. H-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s. In a pitch-black way. Jim is one of our great living writers, and this was his first book. Once I started re-reading it, I couldn't put it down. Strange crap, crap that makes for fascinating reading, happens to Jim Knipfel. This memoir is full of weird stories, and it paints some memorable portraits of Wisconsin, Philly, and NYC.
One of my all-time favorite books.
One of my all-time favorite books.
April 9, 2011
Liked the book, well written. Dark. Jim has a sharp tongue style, shock jock type humor, battles darkness, he mostly just barely hangs on. The book is honest, this humor is self-deprecating and he often just plain feels sorry for himself. This is the reality of his world. With that said, he never whines about his situation.
He spends a his youth in Green Bay and college days in Madison. I am quite familiar with his old haunts. This part of the book is really fun.
He spends a his youth in Green Bay and college days in Madison. I am quite familiar with his old haunts. This part of the book is really fun.
January 27, 2014
Interesting to read how he coped with his increasing blindness in both negative and positive ways. I've never read any of his books or articles, but I got the feeling he was trying to write in a tamer voice than that of his Slackjaw persona's. In anecdotes where his angst surfaced into confrontations, his actions and words didn't have the impact or power I expected from someone who is supposed to be full of rage.
August 29, 2014
I read this a few years ago, but I remembered it, which is unusual for me. (The main reason why I use Goodreads is so I can keep track of what I've read.) When I was trying to think of memoirs I've liked, this one popped into my head. I remember that it was funny in a quirky way and unique in its subject matter. I haven't read anything else by this author, but now that I've remembered him, I plan to! Bottom line: I highly recommend it.
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June 3, 2015I feel like many memoirs these days are about boring people who had one interesting thing happen to them (or caused it to happen to themselves) and then wrote about that in the context of their otherwise totally average lives. Knipfel is a genuinely weird human, and funny, and while I don't believe every event he details in Slackjaw, I enjoyed reading every page and that is something I can almost never say about contemporary memoir.
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