Spinal Discord: One Man's Wrenching Tale of Woe in Twenty-Four (Vertebral) Segments

by Tilman Spengler

One day Pain appeared . . . (declared himself God) and upright Man was stricken in the back, and he was made to stoop, and neither could he claim his ancient place above the beasts in the field nor his time-honored position over women in the bed. Through the author's search for a cure for his back pain, millions of fellow sufferers will sympathize, and healthy vertebrates will double over with therapeutic laughter.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805055525
• ISBN13: 9780805055528
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Attitude Adjustment

Tilman Spengler discourse on how his chronic lower back pain, a demon that appears one Monday morning as his "new Lord" to torment him despite his best efforts to gain respite and relief, is not a self-help book, unless you consider laughing at the 24 brilliantly illuminated anecdotes---one for each vertebra---the path to curing back pain. Rather Spengler grasps the tiger by the tail, so to speak, revealing the myriad therapies he sought, often in vain, to quell his sometimes nearly crippling back pain. He interweaves these experiences with biting, funny depictions of how this new Lord rules his life, affecting his work, recreation, family, and love life.Spengler eschews self-pity for irony and insight, and when he finally hits upon a "therapy" in---of all places, a Texas honky-tonk---that helps his low back pain, his nearly deadpan delivery of the culture clash he experiences will have you howling with laughter. Tapping into vignettes that offer insights history, art, medicine, philosophy, politics, language, and whatever else he targets in his laser beam of dense, moving prose, Spengler informs and entertains. I would offer a tip of the hat to his excellent translator, Philip Boehm, who rendered this English version, all the while remaining transparent and detached, as a true translator should.