Howard Axelrod’s The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude is a book that proves a unique point about life that I have discovered: we pay a psychological price for each and every injury we suffer. For Axelrod, it is the loss of an eye. For me, it was a diagnosis of thyroid cancer at 29. Axelrod, however, acted upon the impulses that often occur to people who suffer profound loss: he isolated himself to (ultimately) reorient to a new life.
This is not easy, or pretty, and at certain times I sense that Axelrod went too far in his quest. The loss of an eye is simply a metaphor for more profound, and hidden discontents within him: the Harvard student, the high achiever, the upper middle-class background. Yes, he lost an eye, and yes that is terrible, but there is more suffering here that goes unaccounted. There is other damage here that is not fully explained.
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