Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival, A Memoir - Softcover

Neugeboren, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813532965 ISBN 13: 9780813532967

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Jay Neugeboren and his brother, Robert, grew up in Brooklyn in the years following World War II. Both brothers—smart, talented, and popular—seemed well on the way to successful lives when, for reasons that remain ultimately mysterious to this day, Robert had a mental breakdown at age nineteen. For the past forty years Jay has been not only his brother’s friend and confidant, but his sole advocate, as Robert continues to suffer from the ravages of the illness that has kept him institutionalized for most of his adult life.

Imagining Robert tells the story of these two brothers and how their love for one another has enabled both to survive, and to thrive in miraculous, surprising ways. It is the most honest book yet on what it is like for the millions of families that must cope, day-by-day and year-by-year over the course of a lifetime, with a condition for which, in most cases, there is no cure. By never giving up hope and by valuing his brother’s uniqueness and humanity, Jay Neugeboren reveals how even the grimmest of lives can be sustained by the power of love.

A film based on Imagining Robert aired on PBS nationally in 2003. With a new afterword that brings readers up to date on Robert’s life, Rutgers University Press is pleased make this highly praised book with its inspiring story available once more to the public.

 

About this title

Review:

Imagining Robert is an account of Robert Neugeboren's 30-year history of mental illness. In this moving memoir, his brother Jay describes the tragedy of psychosis and illustrates the redemptive power of writing. The author imagines his brother as two people--one hospitalized, the other communicative and lucid--and crafts a story of his brother's thoughts by weaving together Robert's exquisitely written letters about this unfolding family tragedy. The instability of the author's own children and his manipulative mother's affliction with Alzheimer's disease multiply the pressure he feels, threatening his own mental health. His careful words seem an attempt to organize the confusion around him. The imagined friendship with the brother he lovingly cares for serves as an important source of self-examination. Neugeboren's prose restores his brother's dignity by refusing to let the details of how Robert has suffered in psychiatric institutions go unrecorded.

From the Publisher:

This heart-rending and ultimately uplifting memoir tells the story of two brothers - one a prize-winning novelist; the other an extraordinarily witty, intelligent man who has suffered the ravages of chronic mental illness for more than three decades - and how their love for one another has enabled them not only to survive, but to thrive in miraculous, surprising ways.

In the literature of mental illness, Imagining Robert is the first book to tell us what it is like for the millions of families who must cope over the course of a lifetime with a problem for which, most of the time, there is no solution.

This is a memoir by one man of another man's life - a brutally honest, deeply tender tale without a familiar (or predictable) happy ending. It gives us something better: an unforgettable story of two brothers that heartens by showing us how even the grimmest of lives can be sustained and graced by the power of love.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0813532965
• ISBN 13: 9780813532967
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328