In the Shadow of Memory

Skloot, Floyd. In the Shadow of Memory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

I found myself wondering throughout this text; exactly how brain damaged is this man? He is clearly articulate. His writing has structure, order, discipline and a “so what?” at the end. And it’s a good read. It is obvious to me that he has done extended research in his quest for finished polished prose Or his wife and daughter have. Once or twice I reached for my OED to check the exact meaning of a word only to discover entirely new layers and nuances to the writing in front of me.

So, how damaged is he? How long would it take me to write an essay in which I seemingly knew all the layers of all in my word/metaphor choices? Eleven months suddenly doesn’t look too long. I knew Whirlaway was a Triple Crown winner, I knew he had been jockeyed by Eddie Arcaro (the only jockey in history to win 2 triple crowns, which is why I know that) – but – it takes some serious research to find the horse that was both a champion and clumsy. Did he just happen on that? Luck? Is he more careful because of his perceived defect? Who does his fact checking? Would I have done the research to discover the particulars about this horse? Did he know them? The amazing nuance here makes it seems likely that he did, it makes us want to believe he did. But there have only been eleven Triple Crown winners and Whirlaway sounds fast, certainly faster than say, Sir Barton (1919) or Citation (1948) and that might have been enough for him. So, for me the possibility exists that he may have just gone with a name that sounded good (it is possible this is the lazy way I’d have done it).

I found myself wanting more concrete evidence about his disability because it wasn’t palpable in the prose (beyond the first section, “Gray Matter”). Had I not been routinely reminded that the author was brain damaged I would not have known throughout the majority of the essays in the text. What sort of virus did he contract? How does he know it was contracted on an airplane? Does it have a name? If so, why is that name not provided to the reader?

Skloot quoted reference upon reference and he did so very eloquently – but gave me nothing personal in the way of his own medical condition. None of his doctors were quoted (with the exception of the SSI psychiatrist). I wanted the author to provide me with something more specific to his condition—not broad generalities quoted from Harvard professors and vague references to failed drug studies.

Despite this, I found myself engaged in his story and this led me to wonder what else has he published? I did some checking and surprisingly, all but one of his seventeen books came out after the onset of his illness. I am curious to read the book published prior to his illness (Kaleidoscope, 1986) to see if I can detect any sort of radical changes in his style or subject matter. Do his wisdoms come from revelations about himself through his illness as he suggests or are his truths what they have always been and now that he has lost his immortality that he feels compelled to commit them to a print.

We all have an illusion—a perceived reality—and we are accomplices in each others’ illusions/perceptions. Immortality is one of the first stripped away. When our illusions disintegrate, what we are left with is often terrifying. When the chaos of the Universe invades the order we believe that we have created, through accident or illness or a million other variables, that invasion changes us more than the specific event. One has to work through anger, fear, disappointment, frustration, rationalization, depression; there are lots of steps to acceptance. I wanted to see more of the process that brings him to what he calls acceptance: because my mother beat me is, for me, not a concise, well thought-out argument. Did he have this feeling that maybe there are no answers; and if so, how did he work that through? I waited for him to get to that and he didn’t. Even with his mother there was a randomness to her behavior, her violence that easily lent itself to that layer or thread that he didn’t and perhaps can’t pursue. And I understand that; reasons are good. They lead to definitions that feed the illusion we call reality. Not having those definitions guides us in fundamentally different ways, not having reasons/answers and having to live with that is what he appears to have experienced on many levels and he does come to a Zen-like acceptance. But he didn’t give me the process of that.