Dead Languages

by David Shields

Washington State Book Award, 1990
Silver Medal, Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards, 1990

From the moment his mother tries unsuccessfully to coax him into saying "Philadelphia," Jeremy Zorn's life is framed by his unwieldy attempts at articulation. Through family rituals with his word-obsessed parents and sister, failed first love, an ill-fated run for class president, as the only Jewish boy on an otherwise all-black basketball team, all of the passages of Jeremy's life are marked in some way by his stutter and his wildly off-the-mark attempts at a cure. It is only when he enters college and learns his strong-willed mother is dying that he realizes all languages, when used as hiding places for the heart, are dead ones.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Language

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

David Shields is the author of fourteen books, including Reality Hunger (Knopf, 2010), which was named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications. GQ called it "the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010"; the New York Times called it "a mind-bending manifesto." His previous book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Believer, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.

Reviews

[Joseph O’Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this a 4 because I couldn’t give it a 3.8. Overall, I enjoyed this book and resonated with the main character Jeremy in many aspects. He is a boy who grows up being haunted by his struggle to speak fluently in a family and world that revolve around language. As a language lover, it was enlightening to read about how one could resent it entirely. Anyone who comes from a dysfunctional family can relate in some degree to this book. I do not believe this is a great story per se, but it did cause me to reflect upon my own life at many points, which in my opinion, makes it a story worth reading. Personally, I found this book to be written in a style similar to Lolita in terms of its cadence and layout (not in subject material), which can make it a tad difficult to keep track of at times.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars, video review to follow

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

A third of the way into this book I was ready to give up on it. Nothing was happening, time sequence was out of order, characters entered and retreated randomly... It was more like an author's stream of consciousness. I find those very self-indulgent, selfish, and tedious. I did stay with it, though, and eventually sorted out most of the details. It still annoyed me that Shields alternately refers to his mother by name or by simply "Mother", or perhaps it was some other woman he called by name. How are we to know? Was I supposed to be keeping notes in order to keep his characters straight? But in the end, it didn't make any difference. I simply couldn't get that into it, or identify with anyone. It didn't help that other than some place names, there was nothing to give this story feet. There were no time references (I don't even know what ERA it is, but anyway he switches places in the past at will) or little else to allow the reader to locate the story with any sense of reference. I finished the book somewhat wondering, "What was the point?"

[Edy · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this novel told the story about how people's lives can be shaped (and somewhat doomed) through the prism of language. Jeremy, the protagonist, is born with a stutter which makes him self consciously aware of all manners of the spoken word. His mother, on the other hand, is a journalist, and filters HER entire life through the written word. In different ways, they are both extra sensitive to the nature of language and the way in which they can use language to manipulate a situation, but also the way in which their use of language defines and limits them.

[Namuna Regmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The main theme of book is somewhat similar with mine.Nice one, loved the book.

[Dylan McNutt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t get past half way through. Feels like a terrible knock off of Catcher in the Rye. Characters felt empty, dialogue was pretentious, and the flow of time was incomprehensible. The concept is interesting but the author does nothing to show the suffering of an inability to communicate. The main character is just some spoiled brat who acts in suffering and then brags of how great and popular he actually is. Just made me mad…

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Decent read if you keep a dictionary nearby. Stuttering boy with mentally ill dad and uncomforting mom and overweight high achievement sister. He has a series of shallow failed relationships as he watches his mother die of cancer.

[Moshe Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful novel by David Shields. Yes, a novel.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a review, but an issue that cam up while reading this book that I'm not quite sure of what to make. I read this novel after reading Shields's recent memoir "The Thing About Life is that One Day You'll be Dead" and noticed that there are about ten times where the exact same passages exist in both books. For example, Shields struggled with acne as a teen, and gives a rather vivid description of it in his memoir. The narrator in the novel has the same struggle, and the description of it is exactly the same, word for word, as the other book. The same examples exist describing the fathers of both characters.

Can an artist plagiarize themselves? I realize that one is fiction and the other nonfiction, but this seems lazy to me. There was a sixteen year gap between when these two books were written (the novel was written first). I'm all for taking parts of actual life and injecting it into fiction, and have done so myself many times. Anyway, I'm interested in what other writers think about this.

[Lulu · Rating 3 out of 5]

[An] unfortunate fact about disfluency is that it prevents you from entirely losing self-consciousness when expressing such traditional and truly important emotions as love, hate, joy, and deep pain. Always first aware not of the naked feeling itself but of the best way to phrase the feeling so as to avoid verbal repetition, you come to think of emotions as belonging to other people, being the world's happy property and not yours- not really yours except by way of disingenuous circumlocution (96).

I thought The Dead were maybe an occult group that scavenged shallow graves, looking for dybbuks, since Audrey's friends liked to say that, at thirteen, they had lived and loved and now were ready to die. They'd gone out in the world and found it a waste, whereas I was still trying to build up the nerve to walk alone through North Beach (99).

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did not like this book, something I rarely say. I picked it up at the library after reading and enjoying Shields' book of essays: How Literature Changed My Life. Dead Languages is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, about a boy struggling with stuttering. I did not like the words, the plot, the characters. I was really turned off by the two chapters about pimples, which I skipped over, like much of the last half of the book. I just couldn't wait to be done with the book and I didn't care how it ended. One review compared Dead Languages to Catcher in the Rye; no in my opinion. In spite of himself, I liked Holden Caulfield, can't say the same about Jeremy Zorn.

[Jenni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book until the last 50 pages when I was rush reading it in time for Book Club meeting....I don't think it is something I'd read again. It had some very funny parts. Unfortunately, the Author reminded me of one of my English Professors at BSU (overeducated, enjoys the belittlement of others, ...maybe I'm wrong and just too damn judgemental).... Best part of the book I thought was getting to see the inside world of a stutterer....Glad I read it but wouldn't have a hard time giving my copy away (and I have a hard time letting go of my books).

[Hulananni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another find from my book sale shelves. I bought it because I teach/have taught English as a Second Language and always enjoy reading about language and words. My attention dropped in the last 40 pages and when the main character, Jeremy, became an 'author within the book."

For anyone who knows a stutterer this might be an interesting read...but it's not a scientific treatise. It's fiction.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't help but read this as a thinly-veiled memoir and perhaps it is. Whatever 'real genre' it belongs to, it is an especially good book for perhaps gaining more perspective on the world of speech disability/stuttering.

[Nereida Llonch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible writing with deep language forms and usage. I understood the pain and confusion as I had a son with similar challenges. It made me laugh out loud plenty of times in such surprising ways. Enjoy!

[Kate]

hmmm...I could not engage with the characters at all. Every time I picked the book up again I could not remember what I had read before. The main characters are all annoying.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though this book is about a boy with a stutter, his story of growing pains seemed pretty universal & relevant.

[Lauren Therriault · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like this book, and I didn't finish it. Sorry Meera.

[Leni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finally finished this book. What a drag. I literally had to skip through the last pages to get it over with.

[Robert Wechsler]

Although Shields is an excellent writer, his story of the often superheroic life of a Jewish boy with a stutter just wasn't enough to keep me going.

[Chhavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember liking David Shields' writing very much and this story quite a bit... enough to seek out his other book "Enough about me" fairly soon afterward.
11 Jan 2017

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good. Funny and sad and gross and beautiful.