Easy to Slip

<p><b>Sam Kovner reads messages on walls and hears voices in the hall, and wonders: if you find yourself losing your mind, how do you get well?</b></p><p><i>Winter, 1976, Columbia University.</i> <span>Hearing voices and seeing hateful writing on walls, early admission Sam Kovner walks the New York streets, sleepless thirty-six hours. Through the radiant specificity of memory, he reckons with a hard-driving father, a caring, sometimes careless mother, a generous, self-involved uncle who’s just become a movie star, and star-struck grandparents. Sam fears the undertow of feelings: he’s not quite spent the night with someone he’s fallen for. Home for high-school graduation, a prom night affair reminds Sam of how he once knew love, freeing him to face his encroaching psychosis. Entering a hospital, he confronts traumatic, repressed memories with unflinching courage. With irrepressible humor and pathos,</span><span> </span><i>Easy to Slip</i><span> </span><span>recalls an era when youth mattered and people healed from psychiatric illness</span><span>.</span></p>