Diminished Capacity
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Dimished Capacity from Sherwood Kiraly tells the humorous story about an unlikely trio who hatch a plan to sell a rare baseball card--the basis for the motion picture starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, and Virginia Madsen.
The townsfolk once voted him the strangest man in Missouri, but he turned the honor down, claiming it was "just a popularity contest." He has baited hooks connected to the keys of an old typewriter by the side of the Mississippi, so the local fish can write poetry. He keeps stacks of old newspapers piled up to his bedroom ceiling, and he doesn't know why. They don't get much more eccentric than old Rollie Zerbs of LaPorte, Missouri.
But he does have one thing going for him--a rare 1909 Chicago Cubs tobacco baseball card, one of the most valuable cards in existence. And even though he can't remember where he just put it, he's on his way to Chicago to see what the card will bring...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kiraly's second novel after California Rush traces two characters with diminished capacity-Cooper Zerbs (closed head injury) and his Uncle Rollie (leaning toward Alzheimer's)-as they take a very valuable baseball card from small-town Missouri to Chicago with hopes that some rabid Cub fans will buy the card and preserve Uncle Rollie's independence for a while. The play between the outwitted and the dimwitted, between the expected forces of evil (bad guys, faulty memory) and some unexpected forces of good (Cooper's high school sweetheart, more memory deficit) help hurtle man, uncle and card toward engaging resolution. The built-in device of a brain-injured first-person narrator is more than this lighthearted novel can handle at points, but Kiraly makes his tale glisten with quirky details: fish who ``type'' poetry in the night, a videotaped Dear John letter, a gunslinging alcoholic who slowly trades off his baseball card collection for beers, a fast-food restaurant with genetically engineered salad. While Diminished Capacity is not narrative rocket science, it is good for a laugh and a pleasant afternoon. Advertising.
