59 RI Bar J., No. 6, Pg. 37. BOOK REVIEW.

AuthorRoger C. Ross, Esq. Practices in Pawtucket and a member of the Bar's Lawyers Helping Lawyers Committee

Rhode Island Bar Journal

Volume 59.

59 RI Bar J., No. 6, Pg. 37.

BOOK REVIEW

Rhode Island Bar Journal59 RI Bar J., No. 6, Pg. 37May / June 2011BOOK REVIEW Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir by Mark Vonnegut, M.D.Roger C. Ross, Esq. Practices in Pawtucket and a member of the Bar's Lawyers Helping Lawyers Committee Author Mark Vonnegut, is the son of Kurt Vonnegut, the noted novelist who gained prominence, and both critical and commercial success, with the publication of Slaughterhouse Five in 1969. In addition to the literary merits of Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut tapped into the national mood of disenchantment and anger over the nation's continued engagement in the Vietnam War. That novel and the author took on iconic dimensions in the late 1960s, particularly on college campuses, largely due to the novel's anti-war theme. Although Vonnegut was highly successful following the publication of Slaughterhouse Five, never again was his work to achieve the same level of critical or popular acclaim.

Mark Vonnegut is a practicing pediatrician in a Boston suburb who, in an informal poll of nurses, was once voted the best pediatrician in the area in Boston magazine. His was a very long and troubled road from an early diagnosis of schizophrenia, shortly after graduating from Swarthmore College in 1969, to becoming a successful practicing physician. Vonnegut was born and raised on Cape Cod. He writes that "craziness runs in the family" and he "can trace manic depression back several generations." From a very early age, Vonnegut felt he was out of step with his contemporaries. When he was in elementary school, rarely did a day pass when he did not get into a fight with a schoolmate. His father, who took a peculiar pride in his own avowed anti-social attitudes, was similarly proud that his son had no friends. At age 10, the author announced to his mother that he intended to kill himself. She dissuaded him by proclaiming that bright youngsters such as he were meant to save the world and that he, and other like-minded kids, should at least give that exalted objective a try before attempting something as permanent as suicide.

In 1958, when Mark was eleven, "the orphans" came. That is the author's term for three, young cousins who came to live with the Vonnegut family after the tragic deaths of their...

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