The Outsider

January 3, 2000
Writing with compassion and candor, Lachenmeyer seeks to understand his father, Charles, a professor of sociology and a complex puzzle of a man who slowly lost his agonizing fight with schizophrenia and died in 1995. Drawing upon the older man's letters to explore his emotional demons, Lachenmeyer discloses that his father's condition deteriorated when Charles was dismissed from Hunter College in 1975 and his mother died later that same year. Although Charles remained optimistic that he could reverse his fortunes, even after losing several other teaching jobs in New York colleges in the 1970s and 1980s, his condition precipitated the loss of his home, marriage and child just two months short of his 38th birthday in 1981. Lachenmeyer admits to his own confusion and bitterness when confronted with Charles's odd behavior, which caused him to sever all ties between them in 1989, when the author was 20. In one letter to his embattled father he wrote: "I cannot live in your world; you cannot live in mine." Eventually, Charles became obsessed with an evil government conspiracy to enslave the world, working briefly as a part-time cab driver before living on the streets. Through interviews with family, friends, former colleagues and medical personnel, Lachenmeyer constructs a heartrending portrait of a man whose emotional illness eventually robbed him of everything, counterbalanced in part by the author's gradual understanding of the plight of homeless people, who are often the victims of madness and misfortune.