Overview

One person can't help stuttering. The other can't help laughing. And in the way one bodily betrayal of better intentions mirrors the other, we find ourselves in the grey area where mind and body connect - and, at the damnedest moments, disconnect. In a book that explores the phenomenon of stuttering from its practical and physical aspects to its historical profile to its existential implications, Marc Shell plumbs the depths of this murky region between will and flesh, intention and expression, idea and word. Looking into the difficulties encountered by people who stutter - as do fifty million world-wide - Shell shows that, however solitary stutterers may be in their quest for normalcy, they share a kinship with many other speakers, both impeded and fluent. Stutter takes us back to a time when stuttering was believed to be 'diagnosis-induced,' then on to the complex mix of physical and psychological causes that were later discovered. Ranging from cartoon characters like Porky Pig to cultural icons like Marilyn Monroe, from Moses to Hamlet, Shell reveals how stuttering in literature plays a role in the formation of tone, narrative progression and character. He considers such questions as: why does stuttering disappear when the speaker chants? How does singing ease the verbal ties of Tourette's Syndrome? How do stutterers cope with the inexpressible, the unspeakable? Written by someone who has himself struggled with stuttering all his life, this provocative and wide-ranging book shows that stuttering has implications for myriad types of expression and helps to define what it means to be human.

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9780674019379

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Reviews

In Stutter , his impressive survey of cultural figures with 'cloven tongues' (including God), Shell describes the trauma of being unable to speak right. If you can't pronounce your name, he says, people will assume you don't know it. One partial remedy for stammering is to take on a new persona: sing, act, learn a new language. Henry James dealt with his impediment by speaking French. Carly Simon 'felt so strangulated talking' that she 'did the natural thing'--perform music. For the more than 50 million people in the world with a 'handicap in the mouth, ' picking the right words becomes an emotional process. (When Somerset Maugham, also tongue-tied, read his novels out loud, he'd replace 'difficult' terms with their synonyms.) Anxious and isolated, stutterers often find more creative modes of expression. It's one way out of what Roger Rabbit calls 'p-p-pp-p-p-p...jail!' The other option is silence. -- Rachel Aviv Village Voice (02/10/2006)

Author Information

Marc Shell is the Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard.

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