Product Description
The acclaimed comic memoir by the popular New York Press columnist. ...

"An extraordinary emotional ride. It is maniacally aglow with a born storyteller's gifts of observation and an amiably deranged sense of humor."-- TheThomas Pynchon

"Knipfel may be blind, but his artistic vision is as stunning as a sunset over the Brooklyn Bridge....It's not like any of the other memoirs you're reading."-- Entertainment Weekly

"Life hasn't been easy for Jim Knipfel. He's blind. He has an inoperable brain tumor. He's got a drinking problem. He's been in and out of mental hospitals. He's attempted suicide. But he's managed to keep his sense of humor..."-- Boston Herald

"Funny, heroic, and yes, entertaining...remarkable elan and some wicked black humor."-- New York Times

"Illuminating...Knipfel's memoirs focus on a time when his marriage was failing, his visual field was shrinking, and an inoperable tumor in his brain was giving him seizures and suicidal depression. While this may sound like the makings of a dreary and pitiful tale of woe, it is anything but. Knipfel's bizarre antics...provoke laughter, not tears...sharp and wickedly funny."-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A vision of brave and astonishing impact."-- Mirabella

"A book that can only be called inspirational...he never loses his appreciation for the basic absurdity of life."-- Newsday

"A modern Odyssey."-- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"For a guy who has attempted suicide several times, he sure is funny."-- Chicago Sun-TimesAmazon.com Review
Who would have thought a memoir about going blind and suffering from severe depression could be so funny? From the opening scene, when an uncle who has the same degenerative eye disease warns 12-year-old Jim, "You better start learning Braille now," Knipfel defies all the conventional responses to adversity. You can't help but laugh when a doctor "who had obviously been playing hooky when they were teaching sensitivity in medical school" tells a wailing woman who has just learned her son is dying, "Please sit down... [he] has a good two or three weeks yet." The hard-edged humor comes naturally to a guy who as a grad student formed a band called the Pain Amplifiers; we're not exactly surprised to learn that his column for an alternative newspaper prompted hate mail as well as fan letters. Knipfel's complete lack of self-pity conveys the particulars of failing vision with blunt immediacy (he wears a wide-brimmed hat so he'll feel impending lampposts before he knocks himself senseless against them). His zest for the world's absurdities makes this book an exhilarating guide to "the weirdness parade I have been marching in my whole life." --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (36)

Snarky and Bittersweet
This memoir is funny,clever and engaging. Knipfel is an interesting guy to say the least. If "Slackjaw" hadn't come highly recomended to me, there's no way I would have read a book about a mentally-ill, guy who tried to kill himself several times before going blind. However, since I did, it was rewarding, humorous, proud and never depressing.

Very important book for rehabilitation teachers
The book is most interesting. Knipfel knows how to tell a story; he tells in a sarcastic way the story of his life. Very important book for rehabilitation teachers for the blind and social workers.

Like reading a fifteen-year-old's journal
Jim Knipfel is an idiot, truly. He's the type of person that delivers stories on characters like Werner Herzog and Ed Gein, very self-aggrandising, and, most significant to his idiot status, fails to understand anything at all. Want to be like Jim Knipfel? Quickly read a story in the newspaper, spend the next ten years watching The Nanny, then write a story based on what you read in the newspaper, and then assume the role of expert on the whole thing.

Inheritor of the Beats?
I like this book. I like Jim Knipfel's writing in general. He's quite good, and seems to be a naturally gifted author who's learned the ropes from his years as a columnist. In a strange sort of way, I consider him to be yet another link in the line of writers first described in the 1950s as the Beats. He measures up to many of those great truthsayers, and I always look forward to more work from Mr. Knipfel.

Long may he linger.

HURRY - BUY SLACKJAW, YOU WON'T REGRET IT
Slackjaw is an entertaining memoir about the author's past.Jim writes with raw honesty and the book has a contagious personal quality that makes it hard to stop reading.Even though people may go through different hardships than the author, he writes in a way in which all people can relate.Through all the hard times, Jim takes the time to look at the ironic, hilarious details that make life, life.
This book is highly recommended... ... Read more