I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me: A Memoir [Paperback]

Jimmy Breslin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

Call it a miracle, fate, pure luck, or just another day in the city where nothing is usual, but in 1991 Jimmy Breslin narrowly escaped death - which inspired him to write this book about his life. Two years ago, Breslin was having trouble getting his left eyelid to open and close. This was too peculiar to ignore, so Breslin decided to pay a rare visit to his doctor. As it turned out, the eyelid was a matter of nerves. But extensive testing revealed something unrelated and life-threatening: he had an aneurysm in his brain - a thin, ballooned artery wall that could burst and kill him at any moment unless he opted for a risky surgical procedure. Breslin agreed to the surgery and at age sixty-five, grateful for this miracle (what else could you call it?), began taking stock of his remarkable life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jimmy Breslin reflects on his life after surviving a brain aneurysm in I Want To Thank My Brain For Remembering Me. From his childhood in Queens, to covering stories on Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and the Beatles, to his family and reverence for Catholicism, to the discovery, by "pure luck," that something was wrong, Breslin recalls the events and people of his past and the meaning they have for him in the present. This is his personal tribute to the magic of medicine and the fragility of all life. As Breslin concludes after the success of his operation, "things turned out pretty well." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Breslin's confrontation with his mortality began with double vision in his left eye. He had an MRI, which revealed an aneurysm in his brain. He was referred to Robert Spetzler in Arizona, who is considered the best aneurysm neurosurgeon in the world. Thus begins Breslin's odyssey from New York City to Phoenix, which takes readers on a wonderful whirlwind tour of his life.He starts with his childhood in working-class Queens, where his father "left the arena early," abandoning the family. He became a journalist when he was 16 and unabashedly informs his readers: "I invented the news column form and other papers immediately went out and hired imitators with Irish names." He recalls JFK's assassination; while other reporters hung around the White House waiting for press releases, he interviewed the $3.01-an-hour gravedigger at the President's grave.Breslin insists that New York "is the healthiest city in the world" and shows us the sights and sounds, which here include serial killer Son of Sam; Casey Stengel of the 1962 Mets; Malcolm X's murder in 1965, which he witnessed; Norman Mailer's unsuccessful 1969 mayoral campaign; and subway shooter Bernhard Goetz playing out his fantasies with a gun. Breslin discusses the great loves of his life: his late first wife, Rosemary, his present wife, New York City councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, and their combined nine children.What is most stunning, however, is his rock-hard Catholicism. "There is no such thing as an ex-Catholic," Breslin admonishes as he continually invokes pre-Vatican II phrases such as "state of Grace," "sins of Omission" and an "examination of conscience." We also see Breslin the Luddite railing against the computers "that took the verve out of the whole newsroom and the charm out of the stories" and Breslin the nostalgist looking back on friends like Fat Thomas, Marvin the Torch and Klein the Lawyer.Breslin's brain operation is a success, and with stream-of-consciousness remembrances, he takes us through the procedure. His memoir is as tough as the streets of New York, and as sensitive as a poet in search of the truth. Major ad/promo; BOMC selection; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 217 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316118796
• ISBN-13: 978-0316118798
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #561,352 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The quintessential Breslin voice, August 19, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Outspoken New York newspaper columnist and author Breslin, famed for his sharp eye and wit, explores his own brain in this memoir of his life and his experience with brain surgery.

The book opens the night before his aneurysm surgery in 1994 and closes with him leaving the hospital, mind intact. In between is a free-association of flashbacks - a rollicking ride through his life, his city and his work - punctuated by contemplative reflections on the nature of God and the human mind.

"I lived in the everyday excitement of meeting strangers who unfold in front of you and become people you cannot wait to tell others about. How can you be expected to notice what is happening to your own life? ...and suddenly I look down and see that my feet are pawing strange dirt at the lip of a grave that maybe could be mine. And that is blinding speed."

At age 65 Breslin made a rare doctor's visit due to eye trouble. The eye is nothing, but the attendant MRI shows an entirely unrelated "bulge," which could be a life-threatening aneurysm.

Instantly Breslin recalls the Crown Heights riot after a black child was killed by a car driven by a Jew and a Jewish student was subsequently stabbed. Entering the area in a cab, Breslin was beaten and finally rescued. "The guy with the knife took me by the arm and led me through the crowd. The rest of me was reeling, a flag blowing in a stiff wind."

Breslin's eye was injured in the melee and he seizes on this as an explanation. His memory of the riot is pungent, urgent, but the doctor brushes it off.

The aneurysm confirmed, Breslin makes a joke. The doctor is amazed at his lack of understanding. But: "I also was treating it just as I do any horrible thing that occurs in a day. I report on a tragedy by remaining cold and callous and concentrate on making notes of the smallest details. In the hotel kitchen in Los Angeles, I counted Sirhan Sirhan kicking his legs five times before somebody sat on them after he shot Robert Kennedy."

As he educates himself about the aneurysm and his options, he recalls the deaths of others - Nelson Rockefeller, his beloved wife Rosemary, the New York stabbing of Martin Luther King and his assassination a decade later - and endures the kindness and shocking insensitivity of various friends and colleagues.

He recalls colorful characters from mob bosses to shady polls, rollicking nights in bars where he learned more than any journalism graduate sitting at a computer (he has the older generation's contempt for new ways).

He remembers the cold dread of being broke, the bitterness of his childhood, his own floundering lack of identity - always pretending to be someone else. And all of it in vivid anecdotes that rivet the reader to the page.

In contemplative moments he explores his relationship with God and the Catholic Church and researches the science of the mind, discovering that there isn't one.

And he name-drops a bit. Governor Mario Cuomo asks the state health commissioner to recommend a doctor for his case. On the other hand murderer David Berkowitz, "Son of Sam," once pointed him out, saying " 'That's Jimmy Breslin. He's a very good friend of mine.' "

Vintage Breslin, this is a compulsive page turner; funny, poignant and opinionated. His colorful, rushing style is quintessential New York and uniquely Breslin's.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jimmy Breslin, Alive and Well!, October 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I became interested in Breslin's book because a good friend passed away this year from a brain aneurysm. My friend did not know he had one and did not know what hit him when it burst. Breslin was lucky. He had symptoms, had it diagnosed, did his homework, and went to the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. There he was operated on by Dr. Spetzler, one of the world's greatest neurosurgeons.

Jimmy's life flashes by throughout the book and we meet a lot of the characters he has been acquainted with. But the focus of the book is the anatomical anomaly known as an aneurysm.

Jimmy takes us inside the O.R. and we can almost see the great Spetzler as he delicately clamps off the bulging blood vessel in Breslin's brain, a brain which has given us over 40 years of wonderful writing and humor, no matter what you think of his politics.

My friend was not lucky, but Jimmy was and so are we all to have him around for awhile.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No commercials, January 15, 2003

By 

Aldo Matteucci (hikurangi) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me: A Memoir (Paperback)

"You take emotions, curiosity, whim, wandering around, out of a day's work and you have a corporation of zombies giving you an array of facts and details not worth space in a waste-basket." writes Jimmy Breslin of many of his fellow journalists. No commercials in Jimmy Breslin's prose, just gusty gutsy sentences, long crescendos, reflective adagios, and many many characters, all of them greater than life.

This is a book of reminiscences first and foremost - thirty years of roaming New York's (and the world's) back streets like a mongrel journalist dog, sniffing garbage, following up on a scent, and peeing at lampposts to mark the most extraordinary territory on earth. Never awed, never condescending, Breslin is simply and unwaveringly curious - hence masterly.

In the second part of the book this curiosity takes him into the OR and over the medical logs unflinchingly to understand the brain surgery he underwent, and to report on it. I'm not sure he fully succeeds in weaving it all into a story, though. It is like passengers watching on the TV screen the plane as it takes off - instant replay, and a bit unreal, or a gimmick. So what, it remains a great read.