I
put off reading What's
Wrong with Dorfman?
as long as I could. Not because I was afraid it wouldn't be good. I
knew it would
be terrific, which is why I finally gave in and read it. I read it
despite knowing that whatever was wrong with Dorfman would soon be
wrong with me. I was right, of course. This is precisely what
happened.
Dorfman wakes up disoriented, dizzy, nauseous,
depressed, and has diarrhea. As I followed his symptoms in the book
it became grotesquely clear to me I had them, too—except for the
depression. The saving grace is John Blumenthal's devious comic
sensibility. Every time I started feeling depressed along with
Dorfman, I came to something that made me laugh. If only poor Dorfman
could have read What's Wrong with Dorfman? whenever he started
sliding into depression maybe he would have laughed like I did, and
felt better. But let's get real.
Dorfman's dad is a doctor, a medical doctor. He is such
a conscientious doctor he takes the blood pressures of Dorfman,
Dorfman's sister and their mother several times a day. He admonishes
the three of them repeatedly, whenever they are in his presence, even
as adults, before meals and, in fact, whenever it occurs to him, to
wash their hands and to make sure they work up a good lather with the
soap. This reminded me of my own father, who constantly harped about
washing hands. The only difference was my father never mentioned the
lather part. But then my father wasn't a physician. He never took our
blood pressure.
It seemed fairly evident to me, as it's probably seeming
evident to you, that Dorfman's father--who does other nutty things,
as well, such as following everyone around in his house turning out
the lights behind them—that Dorfman's father is the reason for
Dorfman's symptoms. That he is neurotic, just as my father was
neurotic.
Living with such nuttiness it would be expected of
Dorfman to be neurotic, too. Unless the experts have re-defined
neurosis, or if in fact there even is such a disorder anymore. For
the sake of coherence here, let us say there is indeed such a thing
as neurosis. Let us say further it's pretty damned clear Dorfman and
his doctor dad are both neurotic nightmares.
I'm not going to give anything away here and confirm or
deny that what is wrong with Dorfman is caused by neuroses caused by
his nutty father. That would be too easy. Dorfman himself would—and
did--scoff at such a suggestion. He spends tens of thousands of
dollars seeing specialists and undergoing every test known to medical
science. He seeks treatments not recognized by medical science, such
as a Chinese “herbal treatment” that might well have been based
on dried “cow turds,” and torture prescribed by a chiropractic
allergist.
John Blumenthal |
It should come as no huge surprise that Dorfman is a
hypochondriac. This means he is ambivalent with test results that
turn up nothing frightening, such as cancer or an aneurysm that could
kill instantly without a wisp of warning. He's relieved as well as
disappointed. His recreational reading consists of “The Big Red
Book” of diseases. He commiserates and talks of suicide with a
down-on-her-luck actress named Delilah, whom he meets in his doctor's
waiting room and who suffers symptoms identical to his.
Dorfman, by the way, is a down-on-his-luck screenwriter.
While he suffers with the uncertainty of his intermittent
symptoms—that's another thing, they come and go unpredictably—his
screenplay, a comic cop story, is undergoing the horrendous Hollywood
sausage grinder committee process that could ruin him for good if it
fails, or save his career if it ever becomes a movie.
Yikes, my own neuroses (yes, me too), which I've pretty
much maneuvered into dormancy over the years, are giving me flashback
pains in the abdomen by my merely recounting what's wrong with
Dorfman's life. I must go now before I contract sympathetic diarrhea.
Okay, I can tell you this: What's Wrong with Dorfman?
has what I would call a happy ending. If it didn't I would not be
sitting here writing this report. I'd be reading an outdated magazine
in the waiting room at my doctor's office. In other words no matter
what is wrong with you, you will find What's Wrong with Dorfman?
not only safe to read but rather a hoot—so long as you read the
whole thing straight through to the end.
An
added benefit for me is that I now diligently work up a good lather
with the soap when washing my hands. You should, too.