Shrink Thyself
Shrink Thyself opens with Charles Traub, Jr., the 52-year-old divorced, lapsed Jewish hero of this novel and its narrator, and terminates with his psychotherapist of 20 months, Travis Waldman, a psychologist and social worker. Traub is terminating because, rather than looking at his life and trying to create meaning from chaos (we learn throughout the book his life has been chaos), Traub has decided to live the “unexamined life,” also labeled by Traub as the “nonpsychological life.”
Now, if the author was being fair to his main character, the novel would have stopped right here, with only blank pages to follow. For how else to portray the unexamined life? But no, Scheft goes on for another 280 pages, having Traub examine all aspects of his life while proclaiming he is not doing just that—the “he” in this case being both author and main character. If this is not confusing enough, Traub is disdainful of others who have not “harnessed the ability to shrink thyself,” the antithesis of the unexamined life.
The novel is all reflections of Traub’s past. He recounts relationships with his therapist, mother, mother’s boyfriend (a relationship that started after his father died, or maybe not), estranged sister, former wife, and various people who knew Tony Conigliaro of the Red Sox (www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/08/17/sad-story-tony-won-forgotten/zHEQSXQQESuTanE9FxyrHI/story.html). None of this is all that interesting except to a self-absorbed main character who excuses his life with the highly inaccurate proclamation, “I try to get my needs met by being available to the needs of others.”
The most unfortunate aspect of this novel is Scheft’s portrayal of Waldman, the psychologist. He is cast as a pathetic individual (Traub was his only patient and only friend) who admits himself to McLean Hospital, an institution itself satirized by being proclaimed most famous because Sylvia Plath was a patient there. Scheft, cum Waldman, runs roughshod over doctor-patient boundaries, thrashing about like a buffoon. It’s just cheap humor.
Speaking of humor, the three book jacket endorsements on the rear cover all call Shrink Thyself “hilarious.” That’s not what I found. Intended humor was often crass, vitriolic, or Borscht Belt humor. If you like Henny Youngman’s humor (“Take my wife . . . please” and “You have a ready wit. Tell me when it's ready”), you might find this book funny.
And finally, Traub fails. The last chapter, in its entirety, reads, “I think I need to see somebody.”
