Stuttering: A Life Bound Up In Words
Marty Jezer spent much of his life dreading such ordinary tasks as making phone calls, asking directions, or ordering food, because he stutters. His moving and motivating memoir is an account of Jezer's attempts to deal with a speech disfluency that he defines as not a mere motor disorder, but, rather, a genetically based, organic disposition affecting the entire person. Jezer discusses the causes, cures, and prevention of disfluency, stresses that stuttering is never anyone's fault, and advises that advances made during treatments often do not transfer to the real world. He himself tried medications, deep breathing, sensory deprivation, speech classes, therapy, and psychoanalysis until discovering an appliance called an Edinburgh masker that generates white noise to mask the sound of the stutterer's own voice. Jezer's speech improved so much that he discovered a newfound talkativeness, abandoned his frustrations, and became his own hero--all in the face of a dysfunction for which the only absolute cure is silence. A valuable addition to any general collection.Patricia Hassler