Saturday, December 12, 2015

My Degeneration" Featured in Thoughtful Alaska News Dispatch Article by Mike Dunham (Cross post from Frozen Grin)

A perceptive and thoughtful article from Mike Dunham appeared in the Alaska News Dispatch on "My Degeneration" putting it into the larger context of the Graphic Medicine genre. The article yielded the following "... the book presents much of the trauma in the garb of absurd humor. Dunlap-Shohl devotes several panels to recounting how nervous or insensitive doctors broke bad news to patients. Some of their manners were so crude that they seem drawn from the sad, wicked comedy of Vonnegut or Balzac." To which I can only say "Thank you". 

(Worries to self about raising expectations sky-high, then remembers, Mike likely the only living person in Western Hemisphere to have read any Balzac.)

2 comments:

Bruce said...

I read Balzac's "Eugénie Grandet" in college and loved it. Also read probably everything by Vonnegut. Favorite: "Slaughterhouse Five," which I've read so many times my copy of the paperback fell apart and died. So it goes....

I liked many of the literary references in your book. Combined with the high drama of your experiences with Parkinson's, and the relentless way you and PD keep duking it out, "My Degeneration" packs a powerful Parkinsonian punch.

Peter Dunlap-Shohl said...

I tried to season the text with little literary references here and there. There are a few Easter eggs there for the alert reader. Plus a picture of John Goodman as Walter Sobchak.