The Autobiography of John Hockenberry

This is non to say that Hockenberry's hinderance at some point disappears from the book as an essential part of his life and sketch, and rather that it is seen and accepted as simply a part of the man, rather than what makes him most who he is. Hockenberry, in other words, with his inclination and verve for life, turns his disability into merely a argufy. He never seeks sympathy for himself, but quite sees himself as simply a man who is doing his job and keep his life to the utmost. He shows himself above all to be a kind-heartedistic diarist who happens to do his work in a wheelchair. His thoughts on himself and world events lead the ratifier to question his or her own tendency to use excuses to explain his or her failures and shortcomings:

In my wheelchair I have piled onto trucks and jeeps, hauled myself up and down steps and usurious hillsides to use good and bad telephones, to observe riots, a vol weedo, streetfighting in Romania, to interview Yasir Arafat, to spend the night in walk-up apartments on every floor from, one to five, to wait out curfews with civil families, to explore New York's subway. . . to observe the shelling of Kabul Afghanistan, to go steady the dying children of Somalia (3).

If a man in a wheelchair can do all this, what right do fully able-bodied individuals have to use e

xcuses with keep to their failures to pursue their desires with gusto? Hockenberry is not only showing how he has overcome the challenges of his disability, he is also offering a challenge to all able-bodied individuals, as well as others with disabilities, to not only do their best in life, but to savour that life to the fullest. Hockenberry is not merely working hard to fit himself professionally and to overcome his disability, he is also showing the reader how much there is to enjoy and wonder at in life, even in the midst of war and other human suffering.

Hockenberry knows and shows that life can be hard, cruel, horrific and immensely unfair, but he never allows this harsh reality to stop him from his work and his joy at be alive.

He does not glamorize his disability, but he is capable is using his writer's imagination to authorise that disability. Ironically, in the following passage, a meditation on the wheelchair itself leads to a reverie leaving the wheelchair far behind:

At the kindred time, Hockenberry is no Pollyana. He does not try to set himself up as an extraordinary man who succeeds at everything he tries to do, or takes advantage of every opportunity. We feel in this book that we are coming to know a man, not a Superman. Hockenberry is strong at showing us the process whereby wisdom is natural from suffering, disappointment and loss:

There are times when his humor after-the-fact saves him when remembering what must have been a truly hurt experience, as when another man, however ineptly, is making love to the cleaning lady he loves while he hides infra the bed. Lying under the bed while Martha and her lover sleep after sex, Hockenberry writes:

In recounting the anger he felt at being referred to in a national interview as the freshman would-be "paraplegic" in space, Hockenberry includes numerous humorous incidents which arose because of that disparagement. He also includes his basic argument --- that he is a journalist
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