Stuttering: My Life Bound Up in Words

MR. JEZER'S GIVES PARENTS INSIGHT ON THEIR CHILDS DISABILITY. AS A PARENT OF A SEVERE STUTTER WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR ANSWERS OR SOLUTIONS TO THE OUR SON'S SPEECH DIFFICULTIES. CHILDREN HAVE DIFFICULTY ARTICULATING THEIR FRUSTRATIONS, EMOTIONS, AND INNER CONFLICTS. MR. JEZER HELPED ME UNDERSTAND MY SONS DAILY STRUGGLES JUST ALTTLE CLEARER. I WISH I WOULD HAVE READ THIS SOONER, I MAY HAVE APPROACHED THINGS DIFFERENTLY. THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORY WITH US.

Book Review Lou Heite [email protected] STUTTERING: A Life Bound Up in Words Marty Jezer New York: Basic Books, A Division of Harper-Collins Publishers, 1997 Marty Jezer's much-awaited book is on the brink of publication, if it isn't already on the stands. Marty, of course, is known throughout the stuttering community for his clear, intelligent commentary and searching questions on several discussion lists. Marty is a commited pacifist whose conciliatory tone consistently rises above flame battles which remind this writer of scenes from Star Wars. In his book he has applied his great good humor to the story of his lifelong battle with his severe stutter, and has come out the winner. From a vantage point of middle-aged mellowness, Marty has taken a clear-eyed look at what it means to be a person who stutters and what impact his speech impediment has had on his life. He is neither vindictive nor maudlin. He makes no attempt to hide his avoidances, his denial, or his embarrassment under a cloak of heroism, and yet the real strength of his honesty shows in his unwillingness to blame any individuals or much of society for the difficulties he has experienced, difficulties which are familiar to us all. Marty is no whiner. The book begins and ends with a description of Marty's participation in an experiment involving a drug that some hoped would alleviate stuttering. For those who have dreamed of a "fluency pill" -- a regular list topic -- these two chapters alone are worth the price of the book. But there is more, much more, to be learned in retracing Marty's path through the minefield of life with a stutter. Marty's story underscores the oft-made assertion that the only thing that differentiates those who stutter from the general population is the fact that they stutter. Marty's loving, if somewhat competitive, family, his school, his neighborhood, his college, and his original career goals are a model of American life in the 1950's and 1960's. I would like to have seen a closer look at the effects of Marty's stuttering on the people around him, but the young Marty was a remarkably normal kid and by his own confession didn't think about that any more than he absolutely had to. There are some wildly funny passages in the book, ones which I think anyone can identify with, whether stutterer or not. The hilarity and pathos of the chapter "An Errant Elbow or an Act of God" is as gripping in its second and third readings as it was when it first appeared in draft on The Stuttering Homepage. And there is a description of a restaurant dinner with his family that made this reader laugh out loud remembering the same kind of conversation around my own parents' table, ten adults and ten monologues only tenuously connected by a most absurd stream-of-consciousness association. And yet, for all the good humor and, yes, love of life in this book, Marty delineates well the kinds of wrenching doubts and wandering