Book Description
In 1972 Larry C. Colbert's life changed suddenly and dramatically when he was diagnosed with retinitus pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, and learned he would soon be blind.But, as Larry's eyesight gradually faded, his insight deepened.In this, his first book, Colbert shares the poignant story of his deep personal struggle with blindness, and the fear that kept him from embracing change.With remarkably frank dialog, and powerful and humorous examples, Insights reveals Colbert's intimate 30-year process of coming to "see" self, and provides practical and meaningful help for learning to cope with change, as well as managing the ideas, emotions, and attitudes that affect us all. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great book to jumpstart your self-help
You don't need to be blind to benefit from the insights provided in this great "little" book (only 111 pages!) It is clearly written, easy to understand, and perfect for all ages. The author is a great public speaker, and now, an equally great writer!

A few years ago I heard him speak at a conference, and was inspired to get out of my rut and begin living the life of my dreams...without the self-imposed limitations and negative and defeating "self-talk" that I was not even aware I was doing...and it was easy! I always wished his stories were available in a book that I could tuck into my bag and read in snips and starts during my day. Well, this is that book!In Insights, Colbert cuts right to the truth of why we struggle with constant change, and explains in everyday, nonthreatening words how our attitudes, emotions, and ideas keep us from experiencing life to the fullest.

Insights contains a dozen funny and inspriational short stories, all set within the very personal story of a blind man learning to "see" his life. Every page...and just about every paragraph contains something meaningful, motivational, and thought-provoking, but this is not just another "how to feel good" or "pump-you-up" self-help guide. This is a "real life" story of a "real life" person, just like you and me, and will help you think about your life and the simple choices you make everyday...and begin making decisions and choices that bring the happiness and joy you deserve.

There's a BIG message in this wonderfully put together "little" book, which you're sure to turn to again and again for a little comic relief, a gentle kick in the right direction, or a good dose of "get over yourself." I recommend it for everyone, no matter where you are on the journey of self-discovery, but especially for people, young and old alike, who are struggling with a sudden and dramatic challenge or change in their life, and those who need a little inspirational "jump start" out of one of life's many little ruts. ... Read more

Amazon.com
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 Book 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-Times ... 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

Book Description
This irreverent, tragicomic, astoundingly articulate memoir about going blind--and growing up--illuminates both the author's reality and our own

On his 18th birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a congenital, progressive disease marked by night-blindness, tunnel vision and, eventually, total blindness. In this penetrating, nervy memoir, which ricochets between meditation and black comedy, Knighton tells the story of his fifteen-year descent into blindness while incidentally revealing the world of the sighted in all its phenomenal peculiarity.

Knighton learns to drive while unseeing; has his first significant relationship-with a deaf woman; navigates the punk rock scene and men's washrooms; learns to use a cane; and tries to pass for seeing while teaching English to children in Korea. Stumbling literally and emotionally into darkness, into love, into couch-shopping at Ikea, into adulthood, and into truce if not acceptance of his identity as a blind man, his writerly self uses his disability to provide a window onto the human condition. His experience of blindness offers unexpected insights into sight and the other senses, culture, identity, language, our fears and fantasies.

Cockeyed is not a conventional confessional. Knighton is powerful and irreverent in words and thought and impatient with the preciousness we've come to expect from books on disability. Readers will find it hard to put down this wild ride around their everyday world with a wicked, smart, blind guide at the wheel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

IN THE WORLD OF THE BLIND, THE ONE-EYED MAN IS KING...
This is an engaging memoir of an intelligent, articulate man who happens to be blind. As a teenager, the author developed the degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, which slowly robbed him of his sight. He was about fourteen or so, when a portent of what lay in store for him visually began making itself manifest. He ignored the signs of his increasing visual challenges and even learned to drive a car, which he drove until it became clear that he was a danger on the road to himself and others.Some time would go by before he and his family would know what lay behind the author's seeming inability to see what was in front of him. When he discovered the reason, he would remain in denial for some time, stumbling about in a sighted world without the sight he needed to do so safely.

Eventually overcoming his reluctance to admit that, yes, he was going blind, he decided to adopt the use of a cane rather than a guide dog. With stick in hand, hemoves about the world in a way that most of us would rather not. Yet, for all that he is blind, he sees the world around him in ways in which many sighted people fail to do. His observations are witty, funny, and irreverent, as he takes measure ofhis life and some of the indignities that blindness has imposed upon him. The author takes the reader on an unsentimental journey through his descent into blindness, only for the reader to discover just how interesting that journey is. The reader comes away thinking of the author not as a blind man but, rather, as a man who happens to be blind.

GREAT MEMOIR!!
Knighton did a fantastic job taking you into his journey of losing his sight.There were times when I felt terrible for him, but then there were also times when I laughed out loud!!There were scenes that did seem to drag on at times, but overall, a wonderful read.I will be looking for his next book!

His wit and humor match his writing talent
Of course this book is inspirational, but to view this memoir as another tale of overcoming obstacles is selling it short.If you take away the subject matter, and judge the writing itself--you'll find an extraordinarily well-written, incredibly witty, and extremely funny book from a writer that has a gift for story telling. Ryan Knighton's intelligence leaps off the page and engages the reader in thought-provoking discussions.He managed to make me laugh out loud as well as cry, and to effectively do both is no easy task.His introspection and fresh, intelligent take on blindness and its effect on his life (and those around him) is insightful and profound.I look forward to reading his next book, regardless of the topic, because I so enjoyed his writing style. His students are learning from a master.

I see where he's coming from
I really did love this book and here's why: It's got life, depth, sparkle, sensitivity, honesty, humor, and the ability to educate me on the interesting life he's led. I laughed when Ryan was talking about how people shouldn't worry so much about the "sighted words" in language. He's got a way with words, which includes making the reader FEEL (and yes, SEE) things, not just read them. Ryan's imagery is colorful and clear, from the beginning when he's working his first summer job and itching to drive the forklift, to the end when he's trying to remember details of a favorite photograph. In between, we learn what it was like for Ryan to drive a car (briefly), date, study, use a walking stick (and adjust to it), teach, get robbed (almost), and deal with his going blind during it all - it's quite a read I'd recommend.

Some Good Material, But Not Perfect
I really wanted to like this book. Some of the descriptions of the narrator's increasingly challenging interactions with the world are wonderful. After reading it, I can well imagine what it feels like to be in a noisy club when you can barely see, or what it's like to navigate a stariway with only a cane for guidance. Even the relationship challenges are interesting and (to me) unprecedented.

But sometimes there is just too much of a good thing. The in-depth narration gets tiring when it strays to non-pertinent events like teaching overseas. There are some good anecdotes, but they break up the stark reality of the growing handicap.

Is it right to only give 3 stars to a book about blindness? Probably not. The author is great! I'll buy his next book for sure. But this one just didn't "get" me. ... Read more