Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival, A Memoir (Paperback)

~ (Author) "AT 3:00 A.M., on a cool summer night-a few hours after my youngest son has graduated from high school-I find myself cruising the deserted streets..." (more)
Key Phrases: first breakdown, locked ward, New York, South Beach, Staten Island (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Imagining Robert is an account of Robert Neugeboren's 30-year history of mental illness. In this moving memoir, his brother Jay describes the tragedy of psychosis and illustrates the redemptive power of writing. The author imagines his brother as two people--one hospitalized, the other communicative and lucid--and crafts a story of his brother's thoughts by weaving together Robert's exquisitely written letters about this unfolding family tragedy. The instability of the author's own children and his manipulative mother's affliction with Alzheimer's disease multiply the pressure he feels, threatening his own mental health. His careful words seem an attempt to organize the confusion around him. The imagined friendship with the brother he lovingly cares for serves as an important source of self-examination. Neugeboren's prose restores his brother's dignity by refusing to let the details of how Robert has suffered in psychiatric institutions go unrecorded. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Neugeboren (An Orphan's Tale) has written a detailed, exquisitely painful and always thoughtful account of his younger brother's long struggle with mental illness. He includes scenes from their Brooklyn childhood of constantly warring parents, extremes of love and hatred, of holding on too tightly and rejecting too absolutely. Robert Neugeboren, who was born in 1943, suffers from a variety of disorders, all roughly grouped together under schizophrenia. He has needed long periods of restraint and multiple hospital stays. His 30-year battle has coincided frighteningly with numerous changes in our attitudes toward and treatment of such illness. Shuttled from doctor to doctor, Robert has been dosed with almost every polysyllabic wonder drug that has surfaced. Some worked; some didn't. None offered the "magic bullet" that the author hoped and prayed for. Neither did such bizarre fads as putting patients into insulin-induced comas. The narrative touches on the author's parallel life as a writer, academic, divorce and father of two and is shot through with an understandable sense of guilt. Could the family have done more? Would greater financial resources have changed Robert's chances for a normal life? The banal dysfunction of the New York State mental health establishment is horrifying in this portrayal, yet, to most readers of the daily newspaper, totally expected. Nothing is solved here, but Neugeboren's account may bring understanding to those who can barely imagine such horrors and comfort to those who have and have felt alone. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (March 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813532965
• ISBN-13: 978-0813532967
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #230,490 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth reading., January 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival : A Memoir (Paperback)

As someone who has made a career of helping the mentally ill, This book broke my heart. Yet I believed the problems existed as stated.

As the parent of a child who, as a teen, developed the need for the safety of psychiatric hospitals, I cried for Jay and his family.

As someone who became clinically depressed after my child's serious suicide attempt, I easily understood the need for what sometimes seemed like unrealistic optimism.

This book offers something for anyone involved with people who are mentally ill. Read it. Keep it. Learn from it.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Let us all kneel before the Great Jay, October 31, 1999

By	Jacques Cousteau (Amherst, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival : A Memoir (Paperback)

First, the good things: it must have taken courage to write the book, because of the possibility of betraying the privacy of the family. At the same time, the writing process must have been immensely satisfying. I imagine Jay finishing it, sitting back, smiling, and saying "If God takes me tomorrow, that's ok; the story has been told." In fact, Jay came to visit my college English class, and he told us that's exactly what he was thinking. I know how difficult it is to tell a true story about oneself in such remarkable detail, which is why the book earns three stars. But based on its execution, I'd rather only give it two. Here's why...

Is this book really about Robert? How many times does Jay congratulate himself on rising above a background that was out to get him? He went to Columbia, you know. And did he mention he's a writer? He throws that in so many times, you just KNOW he views being a writer as the noblest and most enviable profession in the world. The phrase "my accomplishments" crops up an awful lot, especially in a book supposedly dedicated to a mentally ill brother. Also, did Jay mention he's a writer?

And yes, the sentence structure was maddening (pun intended). A sentence can go on for an entire page, sometimes to such ridiculous lengths that I'd walk down the hall and read it aloud to my friends, just to show them with what I was dealing. I understand this problem a bit, though. I imagine Jay sitting at his desk with so much to say, afraid that if he doesn't put as much down as possible, as soon as it comes into his head, he'll lose it. So he erects a quick parenthetical fence and sends it down.

Basically, when I'd finished reading the book for my English class, I wished that Robert could come to visit instead of Jay. Much as Jay tries to overshadow him, Robert is the star of this book and a truly fascinating character. I realize that I only know about Robert through Jay's writing, so I respect Jay for that. But the book irritated me to no end. I guess I'm just not sensitive enough.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Moving Memoir, August 3, 2006

By	C. Pajor (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I absolutely loved this book. Reviewers here have complained that it's not just about Robert, but about the author and his life. I loved that fact. I too have a brother w/ a mental illness, and I too am a teacher and I like to write. I found all of these stories -- the story of Robert, Jay's connection to him, Jay's struggle to tell Robert's story, and Jay's life as a father -- all equally compelling. I finished the book in 2 days and sent an effusive email to the author, who sent me a kind email back that very same day. This book moved me deeply, made me think and want to write.