Overview

Part medical mystery, part war story, and part social and family history, The Mythical Bill is the story of how one man’s physical and mental pain radiates outward into the life and mind of each member of his family. Weaving together diary entries, correspondence, and scrupulous research, Jody McAuliffe examines her father’s life before, during, and after WWII, seeking answers to the questions of what really happened to Bill McAuliffe and what caused his disintegration. His initial postwar diagnosis was torticollis: a condition of persistent involuntary contraction of the neck muscles, causing the head to be twisted to an abnormal position. But torticollis was only the beginning of Bill’s suffering and his daughter’s efforts to understand it. The condition becomes a metaphor for things that refuse to fall into place: the body not in accord with the mind, the head that turns away from reality. From this drama of dislocation and disjointed truths, two braided selves emerge: the I of Jody and the I of Bill. Through this doubleness, the writer probes a set of questions about how much we shape ourselves and how much we are shaped by forces beyond our control. The Mythical Bill, a moving and unusual book, is for people who suffer the devastating effects of combat on the psyche, for those who encounter any debilitating disease, and for those who grow up with a father only partially present. McAuliffe’s ear-catching, evocative, and often breathtaking writing forces readers to confront the most terrifying question posed by a parent’s mental illness: will I get it too? Her narrative voice is searching, compassionate, and self-deprecating, but cut through with welcome bits of humour in this daughter’s story of confusion, sadness, and loss.

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9781609381547

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Reviews

"""Jody McAuliffe has written a vivid work whose ostensible subject is her relation to a troubled, puzzling father who was ill; but the book, exploring the hidden depths in one family, seems a reminder that every life is ephemeral and ultimately unfathomable, and that loss is sometimes redeemed in the complicated act of remembering.""--Colette Brooks, author, In the City: Random Acts of Awareness A beautifully written memoir of a woman coming to terms with her father's illness. When McAuliffe (Theater Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies/Duke Univ.; My Lovely Suicides, 2007) was 20, her father died alone in a psychiatric ward, having suffered from dementia, hallucinations and a variety of presumed neurological diseases. How he reached this point, and why, as well as how the McAuliffe family coped, is the author's subject. While serving in World War II, Bill McAuliffe was diagnosed with torticollis, an involuntary contraction of the neck muscles causing his head to twist toward his ear. After an ill-fated surgery to correct it, he began to experience signs of mental illness, which grew into long, hallucinatory and even violent weekends that overshadowed the author's childhood. McAuliffe pulls from her father's diary entries, letters, interviews and extensive research to bring order to her memories and to decipher what actually happened to her father. While it seems there were many culprits for her father's lingering illness and early death--the VA hospitals, the Navy, misinformed doctors, even other family members--McAuliffe does not lapse into accusatory language; she is more interested in exploring the limitations each faced. Told in a circuitous and, at times, almost dreamlike style, her goal is to investigate her father's past and to understand her own relationship with him and how it has shaped her life. This is not a memoir written with an audience in mind, filled with lurid details of a family in crisis; rather, it's a thoughtful meditation that reads as though it were written for the author herself. Readers will feel privileged to share in her journey. A loving, lyrical, complicated portrait of a mentally ill father and the family he left behind.--Kirkus Reviews Playwright McAuliffe's (theater, Duke Univ.; My Lovely Suicides) brief, impressionistic memoir meditates on the life of her father, William, who died in a VA hospital when she was 20. A veteran of World War II's Pacific theater, William developed torticollis after returning home, which caused his neck to twist and his head to turn sideways, a condition also known as wry neck. Along with this physical contortion, McAuliffe witnessed her father's descent into periods of dementia, which grew in frequency and severity throughout her life. Searching for the origins of her father's external and internal conditions, she intersperses her story with diary entries and letters her father wrote in his last years, positing causes that include psychoanalytic, post-traumatic, neurochemical, and genetic possibilities. VERDICT Eloquent, elegiac, and razor sharp, McAuliffe's memoir neither offers nor finds easy answers. This is a moving tribute to a father and a probing exploration of memory, loss, and illness.--Molly McArdle, Library Journal"

Playwright McAuliffe's (theater, Duke Univ.; My Lovely Suicides) brief, impressionistic memoir meditates on the life of her father, William, who died in a VA hospital when she was 20. A veteran of World War II's Pacific theater, William developed torticollis after returning home, which caused his neck to twist and his head to turn sideways, a condition also known as wry neck. Along with this physical contortion, McAuliffe witnessed her father's descent into periods of dementia, which grew in frequency and severity throughout her life. Searching for the origins of her father's external and internal conditions, she intersperses her story with diary entries and letters her father wrote in his last years, positing causes that include psychoanalytic, post-traumatic, neurochemical, and genetic possibilities.VERDICT Eloquent, elegiac, and razor sharp, McAuliffe's memoir neither offers nor finds easy answers. This is a moving tribute to a father and a probing exploration of memory, loss, and illness.--Molly McArdle, Library Journal

Jody McAuliffe has written a vivid work whose ostensible subject is her relation to a troubled, puzzling father who was ill; but the book, exploring the hidden depths in one family, seems a reminder that every life is ephemeral and ultimately unfathomable, and that loss is sometimes redeemed in the complicated act of remembering. --Colette Brooks, author, In the City: Random Acts of Awareness A beautifully written memoir of a woman coming to terms with her father's illness. When McAuliffe (Theater Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies/Duke Univ.; My Lovely Suicides, 2007) was 20, her father died alone in a psychiatric ward, having suffered from dementia, hallucinations and a variety of presumed neurological diseases. How he reached this point, and why, as well as how the McAuliffe family coped, is the author's subject. While serving in World War II, Bill McAuliffe was diagnosed with torticollis, an involuntary contraction of the neck muscles causing his head to twist toward his ear. After an ill-fated surgery to correct it, he began to experience signs of mental illness, which grew into long, hallucinatory and even violent weekends that overshadowed the author's childhood. McAuliffe pulls from her father's diary entries, letters, interviews and extensive research to bring order to her memories and to decipher what actually happened to her father. While it seems there were many culprits for her father's lingering illness and early death--the VA hospitals, the Navy, misinformed doctors, even other family members--McAuliffe does not lapse into accusatory language; she is more interested in exploring the limitations each faced. Told in a circuitous and, at times, almost dreamlike style, her goal is to investigate her father's past and to understand her own relationship with him and how it has shaped her life. This is not a memoir written with an audience in mind, filled with lurid details of a family in crisis; rather, it's a thoughtful meditation that reads as though it were written for the author herself. Readers will feel privileged to share in her journey. A loving, lyrical, complicated portrait of a mentally ill father and the family he left behind.--Kirkus Reviews Playwright McAuliffe's (theater, Duke Univ.; My Lovely Suicides) brief, impressionistic memoir meditates on the life of her father, William, who died in a VA hospital when she was 20. A veteran of World War II's Pacific theater, William developed torticollis after returning home, which caused his neck to twist and his head to turn sideways, a condition also known as wry neck. Along with this physical contortion, McAuliffe witnessed her father's descent into periods of dementia, which grew in frequency and severity throughout her life. Searching for the origins of her father's external and internal conditions, she intersperses her story with diary entries and letters her father wrote in his last years, positing causes that include psychoanalytic, post-traumatic, neurochemical, and genetic possibilities. VERDICT Eloquent, elegiac, and razor sharp, McAuliffe's memoir neither offers nor finds easy answers. This is a moving tribute to a father and a probing exploration of memory, loss, and illness.--Molly McArdle, Library Journal

Author Information

An award-winning professor of theatre studies and Slavic and Eurasian studies, Jody McAuliffe is a director, writer, and translator who has directed new plays at theatres across the United States, including the Mark Taper Forum, where she was a National Endowment for the Arts directing fellow.

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