There were times when I thought I would have to give this book only 1 star and I felt bad because the author was so vulnerable to slights that I felt he needed my protection. It was the last chapter which saved it for me.

It is the story of a man at odds with his culture believing the culture is right and that he is wrong. With insufficient insight into his situation, he attributes all his difficulties to his dyslexia when actually, most of them were the result of the horrible 50s American culture. He and I were born the same year so I know these times well. I too was at odds with my culture and like him, I suffered accordingly. Where we differed was that he fought for himself while I submitted. And my family rejected the culture so I , though isolated from my peers, at least wasn't judged by my immediate family (though they weren't much help otherwise).

I was hoping he would give me some insight into dyslexia but he did not. You could have swapped in almost any other (so called) learning disability or even undiagnosed bad vision/hearing and the story would have gone the same way. I know this world and I know about the Churchill School at which he starts the story. Like him, I have a son with a diagnosis (ADHD), and like him, I probably have the same one only back then they weren't diagnosing such things.

For much of the book, Mr. Schultz is desperate for someplace to belong and for much of the book he fails to find one. He is accepted in Judaism (though doesn't feel like he should be) and he is accepted in the "dummy" class. Finally, he is accepted is the learning disabled community. His diagnosis is also an identity. He is unaware of the price he pays for this last membership. It is the belief that his brain is broken. In return he gets to no longer feel like his suffering is his own fault.

But his brain isn't broken. It is merely different in a culture that rejects difference. We are still in such a culture, but it was much worse in the 50s. Now we have gay marriage. We also have AllKindsofMinds.org, a group that understands the plight of those whose ways of functioning are outside the norm. We are living at a time when many people brag about being "on the spectrum" and companies think about hiring them as employees to work in high tech development.

In the last chapter, he notices that his son doesn't hate himself for his "disability." Mr. Schultz, it appears, still hates himself, but he recognizes that his son might have found a way out.

I'm still waiting for a book that has insight into dyslexia.