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From
the New York Times Book Review, June 3, 1990
The
Tough Got Going
WHAT'S THAT PIG OUTDOORS?
A Memoir of Deafness
By Henry Kisor.
270pp. New York:
Hill & Wang. $18.95.
By Carlton Lake
Henry
Kisor's book, with
its
solid core of Emersonian self-reliance, may well become an American
classic. In the meantime, "What's That Pig Outdoors?" should be read by
everyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to go through life
without being able to hear a sound; read, also, by anyone who has a
deaf friend or relative, and by every deaf person who wants to be part
of the hearing
Henry
Kisor, age 6
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world and
would be strengthened
by learning how another
deaf person went about it and what he achieved.
Those of us with reasonably normal sight and hearing are likely to be
more aware, even at second hand, of the problems that go with
blindness. The problems faced by the totally deaf are no less real but
perhaps less evident to the uninitiated. This book makes them clear by
providing a candid, articulate and warmhearted case history of how they
have been met by someone with the courage and determination to work
everlastingly at it.
Henry Kisor was a linguistically precocious 3-year-old in 1944 when he
was stricken with a combination of meningitis and encephalitis that,
after nearly killing him, left him totally deaf. With the loss of
hearing there was a loss of balance. It was a year before he could
stand up and walk straight. He stopped talking. A specialist
recommended institutionalization. His parents resisted. They found a
remarkable teacher, Doris Irene Mirrielees, who believed that deaf
children needed a normal home environment. She taught not only Henry
but his parents as well. Henry's mother was a dedicated force of
nature; his father, the kind every boy would like to have. With their
help Henry learned to read and finally began to talk again. He picked
up lip reading (which at best is an approximate skill; the book's title
-- "What's That Pig Outdoors?" -- represents what the author saw when
the question put to him actually was "What's that big loud noise?"
Young friends with normal hearing
were brought in to join his classes
at home, and everybody made progress -- learning was contagious. When
his parents took him, for testing, to one of the leading New York
schools for deaf children, they were told he was far too advanced to
benefit from anything the school could offer.
No problem was insurmountable. Henry became a strong swimmer, but in
competition he could not
Judith
Kisor late in her life, 2003
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hear the
starter's gun, so he
kept one eye on
the left hand of the swimmer to his right and as soon as he saw it
move, he took off.
In adolescence, "along with the rivers of hormones ... came trickles of
self-doubt." He was self-conscious about his speech; he would stay home
if he had to give a report in class. But in high school he became
managing editor of the school newspaper and got a taste of what was to
become his career -- journalism.
At Trinity College in Hartford, he was the first deaf student since the
mid-19th century. The French class was
taught in French. If speaking
English was hard, speaking French was vastly harder; lip-reading it,
impossible. But there was a useful trade-off. His teachers let him read
widely in French literature, and he wrote reports that helped develop
his critical faculties.
He fell in love, but it ended in pain. "You are deaf," she told him.
"You're a wonderful guy, and I'll always love you. But how are you
going to make a living?"
Mr. Kisor was offered a graduate assistantship at the Medill School of
Journalism at Northwestern University. While there, he took time off to
do some writing and editing for a small Chicago sailing magazine. The
editor left, and Mr. Kisor took over much of his work. By the time he
returned to Medill he was on his way to becoming a seasoned journalist,
and when he graduated, with top academic standing and a stronger, more
confident voice, he had a hatful of job offers. He started in
Wilmington,
Henry
and
his father Manown, 1978
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Del.,
went on to The Chicago
Daily News and took up with a
hearing-ear cat, a big yellow tom that saw to it that Mr. Kisor got to
work on time by licking on his closed eyelids to wake him up.
And then, he met Debby. She could not understand much of what he said
on their first date, but by the end of the evening knew she was going
to marry him. The courtship progressed with Morse code signals over the
telephone, and marry him she did -- in spite of a discouraging divorce
rate of almost 90 per cent for marriages between the deaf and the
hearing.
In March 1973, Henry Kisor was named book editor of The Daily News.
When the paper was closed down in 1978, he moved over to The Chicago
Sun-Times as its book editor. He interviewed prominent writers, wrote a
syndicated column and, with an occasional assist from wife, friends,
colleagues and an improving technology for the deaf, became even more
effective in his work.
All the way along, there were setbacks and heartaches, challenges and
triumphs. He has set them down in a clean, deft prose style that is a
pleasure to read and that lets the rest of us realize what an easy time
we have in moving through our customary encounters from sunup to
sundown.
It is a beautiful book. Read it and see.
Carlton Lake, the executive curator of the
Humanities
Research
Center
at the University of Texas, Austin, is the author of the forthcoming
Confessions of a Literary Archaeologist.
Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company
(Photographs from the author's archives) |
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