Do You Remember Me?: A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self [Hardcover]

Judith Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2004

In her award-winning Harmful to Minors, Judith Levine radically disturbed our fixed ideas about childhood. Now, the poignantly personal Do You Remember Me? tackles the other end of life. The book is both the memoir of a daughter coming to terms with a difficult father who is sinking into dementia and an insightful exploration of the ways we think about disability, aging, and the self as it resides in the body and the world.

In prose that is unsentimental yet moving, serious yet darkly funny, complex in emotion and ideas yet spare in diction, Levine reassembles her father's personal and professional history even as he is losing track of it. She unpeels the layers of his complicated personality and uncovers information that surprises even her mother, to whom her father has been married for more than sixty years.

As her father deteriorates, the family consensus about who he was and is and how best to care for him constantly threatens to collapse. Levine recounts the painful discussions, mad outbursts, and gingerly negotiations, and dissects the shifting alliances among family, friends, and a changing guard of hired caretakers. Spending more and more time with her father, she confronts a relationship that has long felt bereft of love. By caring for his needs, she learns to care about and, slowly, to love him.

While Levine chronicles these developments, she looks outside her family for the sources of their perceptions and expectations, deftly weaving politics, science, history, and philosophy into their personal story. A memoir opens up to become a critique of our culture's attitudes toward the old and demented. A claustrophobic account of Alzheimer's is transformed into a complex lesson about love, duty, and community.

What creates a self and keeps it whole? Levine insists that only the collaboration of others can safeguard her father's self against the riddling of his brain. Embracing interdependence and vulnerability, not autonomy and productivity, as the seminal elements of our humanity, Levine challenges herself and her readers to find new meaning, even hope, in one man's mortality and our own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Unsentimental and unsparing, this work studies in unnerving detail what happens when the mind begins to separate from the body and how our society has no model for coping with such fragmentation. Everything disintegrates for Levine's father, a psychologist and liberal political activist, after his Alzheimer's diagnosis. He can no longer comprehend books and magazines, and continues to flirt with women but cannot be intimate with his wife of 59 years. Levine, a natural storyteller and author of the controversial Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, presents more than a tale about one man's disease and its impact on his family; she also examines how society separates itself from those who can no longer think clearly. She explicates the mind/body issues inherent in Alzheimer's from multiple perspectives, invoking a host of psychologists and scientists. She makes herself examine her relationship with her father (which has always been fraught) and her mother (whom she resents for leaving her ill father for another man). Statistics explicate Alzheimer's prevalence (10% of those over 65 have it; 50% of those over 85), but Levine delves beyond the numbers, examining the socio-political psychology of Alzheimer's treatment and what happens to those who fall prey to it. As her father worsens, Levine gets closer to him. This is a daughter's poignant homage to a father she came to know best after he lost his mind, but it's also a searing indictment of how America treats its disabled and a cautionary tale for aging baby boomers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Publishers Weekly starred review Unsentimental and unsparing, this work studies in unnerving detail what happens when the mind begins to separate from the body [in Alzheimer's disease] and how our society has no model for coping with such fragmentation....A searing indictment of how America treats its disabled, and a cautionary tale for aging baby boomers.

Kirkus Reviews starred review A tenaciously engaged memoir from Levine about her relationship with her parents as her father drifts deeper and deeper into Alzheimers....She grapples with her feelings for her father, who was an overbearing, provocative (and occasionally violent) lord of misrule; she considers and rejects taking him uder her own care; she jousts with her mother over her seeming abandonment of her husband. It is a maddening, very human dance, and Levine gets it down just right.

Vivian Gornick author of Fierce Attachments This is one of the most interesting memoirs that I have read. It does that rare thing: combines an honest tale of family life with a vivid -- and wonderfully informed -- presentation of what it means to be overcome by dementia. This is one Alzheimer's memoir that I predict will be read for years to come.

Sharon Salzberg author of Faith and Lovingkindness With wry wit and unfailing courage, Levine has written an articulate, inspiring, heart-breaking and humble book. More than a memoir, this is a thought-provoking journey of self-discovery for the reader as well.

David Shenk author of The Forgetting Honest and smart, Judith Levine's book is not just another caregiver's memoir. It's a valuable addition to the literature of aging and decline.

Mark Matousek author of The Boy He Left Behind This brave, hilarious, heartrending tale is the cri de coeur of the too-smart daughter allergic to lies and sentiment, asking the scariest questions of all: Who am I because of my blood? How do we know it was really love?

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (May 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074322230X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743222303
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,278,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, May 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Do You Remember Me?: A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self (Hardcover)

Do You Remember Me isn't just about Alzheimer's. I could hardly put it down, even though no one in my family or anyone I know well has ever been diagnosed with this malady. Levine's book is funny, poignant, flinty, tender, and very moving. On a deep and affecting level, it's about the struggles we all go through to remain generous, loving and connected in a world that, more and more, pressures us to shut down emotionally and look out solely for Number One. I read this book over a week ago and am still thinking about it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why You Should Read Levine's Story about Dementia, June 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Do You Remember Me?: A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self (Hardcover)

I got a great deal out of reading Levine's fascinating book about her father's dementia. It made such compelling reading that the book was hard to put down. What I especially admired was Levine's skillful combining of autobiographical detail and informed discussion of dementia. The two aspects of the book flowed into each other: the autobiographical details provide evidence for Levine's take on debates about dementia. She's fully informed about these debates having read both neuroscientists and psychologists and more on the issue. She is thus able to discuss the science involved without overwhelming the reader.

Second, as with many others I'm sure, elements of Levine's story resonated with my experiences with relatives who are aging. Levine's understanding of dementia and her description of the problems of assisted living were illuminating.

Third, I was persuaded by Levine's view of dementia, and the side she takes in ongoing debates. While in no way denying the biological changes in the brain that go with aging, Levine shows that the way a person reacts to neurological changes (the tangled plaques, etc) depends on her context-on her social and emotional environment. Also, how others respond to one's aging determines one's vulnerability to dementia. This very much fits in with my interest in the social construction of "aging," and in how age discourse impacts on those of us, indeed, aging, from the marketing geared to this group to the continued dismissal and marginalizing of the elderly in a youth-obsessed culture. Levine's analysis of the Cartesian model and what's wrong with it resonates very much with new work by Teresa Brennan, in her posthumous Transmission of Affect. Reader's of Levine's book might appreciate reading Brennan.

Finally, Levine's discussion of the caregiver and different expectations of this role, different possibilities of the role, was very informative.

Levine's openness about her family and personal life is remarkable and draws the reader in. I was fascinated with drama that emerges in Levine's relationship with her mother, and appreciated the irony that Levine could get closer to her father once he could no longer provoke intellectual battles with his daughter: This supports Levine's view that the rational, individual self of the western enlightenment omits many other important ways of being, loving and knowing.

Levine's writing throughout does not get in the way of what she's saying, which, for me, is the highest praise one can give about any writing.

I appreciated the opportunity to read this book. It should be mandatory reading for every social worker, doctor and caregiver!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really thoughtful, very helpful, July 26, 2004

By 

S. Cooper (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Do You Remember Me?: A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self (Hardcover)

Just want to strongly echo the other reviews. Loved her thoughtfulness about dementia, relationships and family - and honestly, found it very helpful for thinking about and relating to my aging parents (early 80's) who do not have Alzheimers, but are certainly getting older. A very respectful and loving book, smart. Recommend it a LOT.