Slackjaw

It wasn't until he was in his early twenties that doctors discovered that Jim Knipfel's nearsightedness was the result of an untreatable rare genetic eye disease known as retinitis pigmentosa, which, they said, would leave him blind within a few short years. Furthermore, he was informed, it was an inoperable brain lesion that was causing the suicidal depression and emotional free-for-all he was experiencing. Add to that a drinking problem, a marriage on the rocks, and a lack of any obvious job skills, and you have a young man on the fast track toward oblivion. In an unpredictable, swift-paced, and stirring memoir, Knipfel maintains his absurdist perspective in recalling a life overrun with troubles of every variety. Along the way he introduces us to neurologists, newspaper editors, murderous punk rockers, optometrists, bartenders, petty thieves, genies, social workers, and friends and family who look on as an innocent young man from the Midwest is driven helplessly mad and becomes incurably blind. It is an enthralling confessional about enduring, even laughing, in a world where seemingly nothing goes right, for anyone.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.