Dialectical Journals
The Lobotomy“My name is Howard Dully. I’m a bus driver. I’m a husband, and a father, and a grandfather. I’m into doo-wop music, travel, and photography.
I’m also a survivor: in 1960, when I was twelve years old, I was given a transorbital, or ‘ice pick,’ lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some ‘tests.’ It took ten minutes and cost two hundred dollars.” This is the preface and back cover summary to Howard Dully’s novel My Lobotomy. My Lobotomy is the autobiographical retelling of Dully’s life, taking place mostly in California in the 60’s and 70’s. He began searching for answers regarding the execution of his lobotomy in the early 2000’s. Dully’s research led him to narrate a radio broadcast on his lobotomist’s life and connect emotionally with listeners. After the radio broadcast was successful, Dully was prompted to write this novel. It was this passage that intrigued me most when I picked up this book. The phrasing is very blunt and straightforward, like a medical textbook, which lead me to believe that this book would be filled with gory details of the lobotomy. I was wrong, but that will be addressed in the book review. This passage also elicits a sense of pity for the lobotomy patient, because of how plainly he states that his stepmother willingly offered him up to be operated on. |
Being a Victim“We are all the victims of what is done to us. We can either use that as an excuse for failure, knowing that if we fail it isn’t really our fault, or we can say, ‘I want something better than that, I deserve something better than that, and I’m going to try to make myself a life worth living.’”
This is the last passage included in Dully’s novel. He has come very far in the retelling of his life and now the story is at a close. Before this passage he explains how he could very easily have been a complete victim of his lobotomy. He reminisces that everyone is a victim of something, like his father of his cancer and his mother of her violent tendencies. Dully doesn’t want people to just accept being a victim, though. He thinks people deserve better than what they are a victim of. After all his research, planning, and execution of both his radio broadcast and autobiography, Dully wants to leave a positive message for his readers. Even though we are all victims of something, we can overcome it. This connects back to what Mr. Brown is teaching in class; that people are affected by their environment. Everyone is a victim of their surroundings, but it takes a special kind of person to rise above being a victim and instead being a hero. |
Book Review
Dully, Howard, and Charles Fleming. My Lobotomy: A Memoir. New York: Crown, 2007.
Lobotomies have been a focus of morbid curiosity since they were coined in 1935. A lobotomy is a medical practice that involves inserting long, sharp tools into the back of a person's eye socket to penetrate the thin bone in order to sever pathways of the brain’s frontal lobe. The very thought of this procedure is chilling and even gives some people headaches once a lobotomy is mentioned. Of course America is always interested in blood, guts, and violence, and this was the main reason I picked up Howard Dully's My Lobotomy. I wished to read something morbid and disturbing. What I got wasn’t nearly as exciting as I had hoped it would be. If you are a person looking for something creepy, this is not the book for you.
The protagonist of My Lobotomy is fifty nine year old Howard Dully, a bus driver and husband. He was considered the “problem child” by his rather malicious stepmother. When Howard got to be twelve years old, his father and his stepmother had a lobotomy performed on him. The lobotomy was intended to make Howard a more quiet, peaceful child. Instead, it seemed to hardly do anything. Dully was in and out of mental institutions and jails for most of his life. He wasn’t crippled by the procedure and could function well enough, but he often laments that no one ever taught him how to do anything, and so he relied on crime to get him through life. After Dully’s life had calmed down a bit in his fifties, he began to do research on lobotomies. His research eventually led him to narrate a radio broadcast about lobotomies and their victims. After the broadcast, a friend recommended that he turn it into a memoir.
The theme of this novel is that even if you’ve been damaged or made a victim in some way, you can rise above it and make a better life for yourself. Dully’s lobotomy made him believe that he was unwanted, and so he behaved that way for a long time. He was very unhappy in his life of crime and blamed it on his father, his stepmother, and the procedure. It wasn’t until he met his wife that he realized he needed to clean up his act. Dully knew that the lobotomy had damaged and harmed his life, but he finally accepted it and moved on. He now lives a happy, peaceful life and he wants others to know that their flaws do not define them.
I didn’t like this book because it was far too dry for me. The writing style was bland and tedious. The story itself wasn’t even all that great to compensate for the writing. I expected a story about a man who had had a lobotomy living a life of crime to be far more interesting. Instead, I was disappointed. Although Dully’s life couldn’t be considered ordinary, it certainly wasn’t exciting.
Although I didn’t like the book itself, I praise Dully for writing it and getting his story out there. He knows his voice deserves to be heard, and he is brave enough to broadcast it, literally. Dully’s story may also prove uplifting for anyone else who may be suffering from mental illness or a physical disability. I appreciate the message Dully wants to get across, but the book was far too mundane to keep me absorbed.
In conclusion, I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they would like to read something akin to a textbook. Dully’s heart was in the right place when publishing this book, but I just feel no emotion in his writing. If he means to reach out and change people’s lives for the better, then there is no more direct or better way to touch them through a book, and I applaud him for trying. But even if he has uplifted some people, I still wouldn’t recommend this boring book.
Lobotomies have been a focus of morbid curiosity since they were coined in 1935. A lobotomy is a medical practice that involves inserting long, sharp tools into the back of a person's eye socket to penetrate the thin bone in order to sever pathways of the brain’s frontal lobe. The very thought of this procedure is chilling and even gives some people headaches once a lobotomy is mentioned. Of course America is always interested in blood, guts, and violence, and this was the main reason I picked up Howard Dully's My Lobotomy. I wished to read something morbid and disturbing. What I got wasn’t nearly as exciting as I had hoped it would be. If you are a person looking for something creepy, this is not the book for you.
The protagonist of My Lobotomy is fifty nine year old Howard Dully, a bus driver and husband. He was considered the “problem child” by his rather malicious stepmother. When Howard got to be twelve years old, his father and his stepmother had a lobotomy performed on him. The lobotomy was intended to make Howard a more quiet, peaceful child. Instead, it seemed to hardly do anything. Dully was in and out of mental institutions and jails for most of his life. He wasn’t crippled by the procedure and could function well enough, but he often laments that no one ever taught him how to do anything, and so he relied on crime to get him through life. After Dully’s life had calmed down a bit in his fifties, he began to do research on lobotomies. His research eventually led him to narrate a radio broadcast about lobotomies and their victims. After the broadcast, a friend recommended that he turn it into a memoir.
The theme of this novel is that even if you’ve been damaged or made a victim in some way, you can rise above it and make a better life for yourself. Dully’s lobotomy made him believe that he was unwanted, and so he behaved that way for a long time. He was very unhappy in his life of crime and blamed it on his father, his stepmother, and the procedure. It wasn’t until he met his wife that he realized he needed to clean up his act. Dully knew that the lobotomy had damaged and harmed his life, but he finally accepted it and moved on. He now lives a happy, peaceful life and he wants others to know that their flaws do not define them.
I didn’t like this book because it was far too dry for me. The writing style was bland and tedious. The story itself wasn’t even all that great to compensate for the writing. I expected a story about a man who had had a lobotomy living a life of crime to be far more interesting. Instead, I was disappointed. Although Dully’s life couldn’t be considered ordinary, it certainly wasn’t exciting.
Although I didn’t like the book itself, I praise Dully for writing it and getting his story out there. He knows his voice deserves to be heard, and he is brave enough to broadcast it, literally. Dully’s story may also prove uplifting for anyone else who may be suffering from mental illness or a physical disability. I appreciate the message Dully wants to get across, but the book was far too mundane to keep me absorbed.
In conclusion, I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they would like to read something akin to a textbook. Dully’s heart was in the right place when publishing this book, but I just feel no emotion in his writing. If he means to reach out and change people’s lives for the better, then there is no more direct or better way to touch them through a book, and I applaud him for trying. But even if he has uplifted some people, I still wouldn’t recommend this boring book.