From Publishers Weekly
Rucker (
The Sopranos: A Family History) has written many TV shows, including the 2005 Peabody Award–winning Vietnam documentary,
Two Days in October. At 51, he became a victim of transverse myelitis, a rare neurological disorder that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Opening with an entertaining, sarcastic glimpse at the TV industry and his struggles to script amusing "patter for splashy Hollywood ego fests," he interrupts the fun with a chilling account of the two hours in 1996 when he suddenly became paralyzed. Learning to reprogram his life at L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he felt "fear, guilt, loss, more fear" and had crying jags plus the shame and embarrassment of bowel accidents. Listing a litany of "pride-bruising indignities,"such as being gawked at and carried up stairs "like a beanbag chair," he explains how he confronted each new challenge. With many pages devoted to dealing with the "overly kind" able-bodied and their self-conscious attitudes, this potent memoir is also an effective how-to guidebook for anyone who is disabled. Rucker is a gifted observer-humorist, unleashing a straight-arrow honesty and a vibrant, penetrating wit while probing the most intimate aspects of contemporary life and human behavior.
(Jan. 9) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
TV writer Rucker likes to think he's on the cutting edge of what lies in the future for all of us. Truth be told, he is. In our hearts, we all know we will one day lose our independence to the ravages of old age and/or illness. Rucker doesn't make it seem as bad, however, as many anticipate. The limiting problem for him is transverse myelitis, which struck him from out of the blue when he was a mere 51 years old and in excellent health. In an hour and a half on a Tuesday afternoon, the able-bodied runner was thrown back to some of the physical helplessness of infancy by paralysis from the waist down. Ten years later, and with self-deprecating humor, he is able to walk--er,
roll--through the ups and downs of being wheelchair bound. He has two rules: never whine, and never ask "Why me?" since that leads only to whining. He does lament the lack of positive wheelchair role models in the movies. Meanwhile, he's a good literary role model.
Donna ChavezCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
