Customer Reviews

Lost in America: A Journey with My Father

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Whoa, this is a hard one. Lost in America, written by the gifted Nuland, is an ode to his father, a work of self-therapy for himself, a gift to his readers, and an offering to anyone looking for resolution and understanding of a difficult family situation.
Lost in America begins with the author admitting to coming under the grips of debilitating depression, and the writing of this book seems to have been his way of fighting out of that despair, of coming to terms with some of its causes, and of trying to explain all that went wrong with his father's life as a Jewish immigrant in America - and how those failures impacted Sherwin Nuland. The turning point comes with Nuland's discovery that his father suffered the mental and neurological effects of late-stage syphilis - and with his acceptance that happiness for him would be impossible.
Heartbreaking and oh, so beautifully written. But also difficult (on an emotional level) to read; you may find yourself putting it aside for a few days before wanting to continue. But persevere and read to the end. You won't regret it.

This isn't the kind of book I normally read, but it was given to me before I went on vacation. I just picked it up one night and couldn't put it down. Nuland first takes the reader on a familiar journey as a son of poor immigrants struggling to survive in a new country. In widening circles of description, recognition, and, finally, illumination, Nuland allows the reader to accompany him in his own journey to understanding and perhaps forgiving the person who influenced his life so strongly. The book is funny and tragic and very very moving.

In an earlier book, Dr. Nuland told us How We Die. That book gave me some understanding and comfort following my father's death. In this beautifully-written and heart-wrenching memoir, Dr. Nuland tries to come to terms with his own father's death and in doing so, manages to exorcise some demons.
This is a very brave memoir in that the author spares no one, including himself. It is at once brutally honest (sometimes so much so, that I had to stop reading) and incisive. His prose style--unusual for a doctor--is lyrical and succinct. He tells his story from a uniquely Jewish perspective (naturally) and so I wondered if readers with other religious affiliations would respond in the same way. Perhaps it doesn't matter. The book is a winner and I am enriched from having read it.

In 1994, when DR Nuland published his "Best Seller". "How We Die", I wrote a review for a Journal. As a surgeon, I was not impressed with explication of the disease processes that commonly caused death and the organization of the material; but I distinctly remember giving Nuland high praise for "his literary facility with the narrative in the case histories and the poignancy of his boyhood family life".

This same literary power is revisited in "spades" as he deftly threads the emotions of ethnicity, bizarre family dynamics, guilt, failures, despair, poverty, illnesses, hatred, rage, control and triumph into the fabric of a powerful narrative. The chronology conveniently saves the denouement of the malady that causes the Father's problems to almost the end.

The author's triumph in being appointed Chief Surgical Resident brought redemption for the father's failures as well as a modicum of reconcilliation and (unexpressed) love to the father-son rapport.

The author's wish that his father would die so that he would not cause him further embarassment perhaps emanated the ethical guilt to be expunged by re-visiting the father-son dynamics in the writing of this book. The moral honesty with which he wrote of this relationship had to have been very painful for the author, as it seemed palpable to me in the reading(a mark of good literature).

This is definitely Nuland's best literary work.

I love this book. Dr. Nuland takes you on a journey with him to his past and his family, in particular his relationship with his father. He tells his story in a manner that is simple, clear, yet deeply moving. His characters are real people who I really cared about while I was reading. I've read his previous books and was very impressed; this one is even better. His description of his severe depression was gripping. How I wish I could describe mine as well. Thank you, Dr. Nuland for a heart-warming book.

A most moving, thoughtful, disarmingly candid, disarmingly honest perusal of what it was to grow with an immigrant father apparently deffective in every respect, however full of love for a son both as he was and as he came to be, almost a dissection of human emotions yet a most loving one; we share the awe, mixed love-shame and adventure of the author in discovering the scope of what is a human being and what a human being can be, as he uncovers a past ultimately bountiful with the reward for him of overcoming hindrances and prejudices in a new world. I don't think the author aimed to show this, but by overcoming hindrances and prejudice he ends gaining his own rightful place in that new world and in the process makes his father triumph. The book, and the journey, is a triumph of the human spirit.

The most touching part of this wonderfully-written book, for me, was the part about the pudding that Sherwin Nuland's father, Meyer Nudelman, made for his adult son. The bountiful offerings of pudding became a panacea, an effort to indulge a child both beloved and beleagured by his father.

The book soars to its zenith with one short, simple and masterful understatement at the end of the first full paragraph on page 197. There were many other rewards, but for that alone, it was worth reading.

The hardest part of any memoir is for the author to honestly describe his or her own lowest moments, the sort when we hate them and feel sympathy for those they hurt. On these grounds alone, one must admire Nuland's honest assessment of his own situation growing up. The embarrassment children of immigrants feel at their parent's attachment to their old lives and inability to adapt to the new. The desire of the new generation to loose their ancestry and become truly American, contrasting with the older generations loss at never truly fitting in. Nuland's account is touching and honest. One feels for all of his characters deeply and cannot help but cry as many of the aspirations they share also pull them apart.

Nuland's work can be read on two levels. The first, as an account of a particular group of immigrants, with all of their pain and joy brought to the fore through wonderfully poignant writing. Second, one sees how the immigrant experience transcends any particular group, and that what ever their point of origin, all immigrants share common aspirations and fears when they arrive on these shores. On either level, this brief page-turner is well worth your time.

Dr. Nuland thought his immigrant father was simply weird or peculiar or just never adjusted to life in America until he was well into medical school, and diagnosed his father's tertiary syphilis by reading about it in a textbook. It explained everything, and in the tradition of the day, his father was never told the truth - not that anything could have been done. By the time he received treatment, his nervous system was already permanently damaged.

Interwoven are colorful stories of his own growing-up years (my personal favorite: learning the F word from older boys in the neighborhood), and the tragedy of his mother's death from cancer when he was 11. The type was never specified in the book; I had come to a conclusion that it was cervical or uterine cancer, and a Google search revealed that it was colon cancer. Either way, the results were the same. His father never remarried, but lived a platonic existence with two older female relatives (I read it a while back so don't recall the exact nature of their relation).

He kicks off the book with his own episode with mental illness and the resulting institutionalization which destroyed his first marriage. I first heard about that in a Book TV interview where I learned about this book as well. How much of this might have been precipitated by his childhood experiences is unknown.

It's a roller coaster ride of a story.

This powerful and moving memoir tells the story of the childhood and growing- up years of the physician- author Sherwin Nuland. While the greatest emphasis is on the author's relation to his father, his relationships with other family members that shared the same household, his mother, his Bubbe, his Aunt Rose, his older brother are also described.
The book opens with Nuland's description of himself in total depression, and about to receive a lobotomy, when a young psychiatric student prevents this, and instead prescribes an alternate treatment. Nuland receives twenty shock treatments and they take him out of his depression.
He then by implication relates the depression to the story of his difficult childhood, and relation with his father. His father Max who worked as a tailor , was completely alone in America aside from his wife's family. He was a difficult suffering hypersensitive easily humiliated, easily outraged parent. Nuland tells the story of life in a home where his Bubbe and aunt did not speak with his father, and in which his beloved mother was the center until she passed away. Nuland tells of the years in which he accompanied his father,supported him as he limped along, and was ashamed of him. He quotes at length his father's Yiddishized English, a language which appears somehow grotesque and awkward without redeeming humor.
Nuland also tells in a most moving way of dramatic moments in the family's life. The day his father comes home broken and weeping, carrying with him a Jewish Forward account of how in his native city the entire population had been murdered, machine gunned to death by the Nazis.
Another moving tragic day is the day of Nuland's mother's death.
One beautiful moment is the one in which Nuland is told that he has been made Chief Surgical Resident at Yale Presbyterian. He races to his father's hospital bed and tells him the news. And he feels his father's sense of triumph and justification.The older immigrant generation, his father, his mother, his Bubbe, his aunt had lived for the 'hope' of what the younger generation might become in America. And Nuland's success as a doctor justifies the father's life to himself. The person who had always felt insulted, humiliated comes a short time before his death to feel that it all has been worthwhile.
This is once again a tremendously moving story. What I missed and what I have questions about are the other aspects of Nuland's life which are not written about. For instance it must have taken him an incredible amount of work and dedication to arrive at where he arrived in his studies. Nothing is said of that.