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Loading... Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoirby Mark Vonnegut M.D.
Penguin Random House (72) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A real disappointment. Over the years, Vonnegut has become less committed to writing, and it shows. A lot of family stuff is alluded to without being detailed and dramatized, leaving huge swaths of emotional territory flat and featureless. Side trips into extracurricular sports, illegal fishing, and casual mycology might be nice for color in a memoir where the characters and through line were better defined, but here they seem like padding. Fragments are frequently placed almost at random, as though they were notes for sections never written. It's a quick and genial read--Vonnegut's good company--but his book lacks force and insight. I seriously doubt someone as smart, capable, and long-lived hasn't peered deeply into himself, but he doesn't really want to tell us about it. ( ) Very interesting, sometimes disjointed account of Vonnegut's life with mental illness. You get some family history, some descriptions of what it's like to go crazy, and actually a lot of discussion about the horrible state of medical care in this country. Vonnegut goes to Harvard Medical school after a hospitalization for schizophrenia (although he points out that now he'd be diagnosed as bipolar) and he becomes a top pediatrician. He also deals with alcoholism, his father's death, more breakdowns, and a failed marriage. Not interested in father Kurt. Not interested in Mark's implication that I beat the demon because I was determined to do so, and you can, too." Not interested in generalizations like "You" and "We" and "People" and "America." This book helps me understand neither myself, nor my son, nor others I know who have challenges, not one whit more." no reviews | add a review
Distinctions
Biography & Autobiography.
Psychology.
Self-Improvement.
Nonfiction.
HTML:More than thirty years after the publication of his acclaimed memoir The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut continues his story in this searingly funny, iconoclastic account of coping with mental illness, finding his calling, and learning that willpower isnâ??t nearly enough. Here is Markâ??s life childhood as the son of a struggling writer, as well as the world after Mark was released from a mental hospital. At the late age of twenty-eight and after nineteen rejections, he is finally accepted to Harvard Medical School, where he gains purpose, a life, and some control over his condition. There are the manic episodes, during which he felt burdened with saving the world, juxtaposed against the real-world responsibilities of running a pediatric practice. Ultimately a tribute to the small, daily, and positive parts of a life interrupted by bipolar disorder, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So is a wi No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumMark Vonnegut M.D.'s book Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)618.928980092Technology Medicine and health Gynecology and Pediatrics Pediatrics & Geriatrics Pediatric Care Diseases of nervous system and mental disorders Mental disordersLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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