A Brilliant Career

On July 9th, 1980 I broke my neck in a waterskiing accident, which resulted in quadriplegia. A Brilliant Career proceeds in three parts. In Part I, I discuss my eight-month hospitalization, with flashbacks to an able-bodied trip to the East Coast taken ten days before my accident and ending with my narration of the accident. Part II contains vignettes of life in a wheelchair, difficult facts often retold with humor. Part III contains one-sentence to five-page reflections on what the disability might mean, this radical slowing down, from the perspective of having lived for twenty-six years between wheels.