Imagining Robert
Imagining Robert
My Brother, Madness, and Survival, A Memoir
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.
A powerful story...Robert is a person here, and not a case history....among the many enlightenments the book offers, there is a double lesson about the imagination and illness.
[Neugeboren] is the first writer to capture what it's like for the millions of families who must cope with a problem for which, most of the time, there is no solution. It's that portrait of a loving relationship that gives Imagining Robert its great power.
Novelist Neugeboren has written a detailed, exquisitely painful, and always thoughtful account of his younger brother's long struggle with mental illness. [It] may bring understanding to those who can barely imagine such horrors and comfort to those who have and felt it alone.
An uncommon tale of brotherly love, and a passionate defense of the notion that dignity belongs as much to the mad as the rest of us.
Skillfully written...this book will appeal and offer solace to those with loved ones suffering from mental illness.
[A] rich portrait of mental illness and love.
