Against Pity

Her tales are generally told in a chatty style. This works for the most part, though I wish the Southern lady, in turning the tables on all those Yankee writers who have tried to reproduce Southern dialect, had not tried to reproduce the speech of the New York cabdriver. "I take you to Foity-foive Foity-sixth, and if that dun't woik, we can troy something else."

Her foray into elective politics in the form of a run for the Charleston seat on the County Council is hilarious and unforgettable. She ran a contest for a campaign slogan and eventually came up with: "Vote Harriet. What the hell, why not?" Who could resist voting for such a candidate? "Our politics can be ceremonial and stately," she writes about courtly Charleston, "but no one would call them pretty -- even when the azaleas are in bloom." Try putting into that mix a wheelchair atheist with dangly earrings and a platform of gun control, abortion rights and the right to burn the flag. She lost.

When she turns to her role in a court case involving the Americans With Disabilities Act, and later to her debate with Singer, the serious person beneath the chat is fully on display, along with the seriousness of the issues and the discrimination that handicapped people in America face. To make the abstract issues of the courtroom real and immediate, she follows with a chapter on a wheelchair accident that she once suffered at a conference in Tucson. This is a terrifying story. Every movement by emergency personnel had to be just right, with dire consequences for the wrong move, and the medication at the hospital had to be exact for a unique patient. In a curious twist, it was Johnson herself who directed every move, despite being crumpled in a ball on the ground and in terrible pain. She was the one in charge.

There is a small but discrete growing literature by writers who have experienced personal or family tragedy: William Styron on his depression, Reynolds Price on his paraplegia, Kenzaburo Oe on his brain-damaged son, Morton Kondracke on the Parkinson's disease of his wife, Milly. Though the specific nature of the difficulty varies in these books, they all touch on common themes: fear, pity, anger, depression, shame, risk, relation to the outside world. To read these stories can deepen everyone's humanity. But they are also especially useful to the millions who quietly endure the same or worse situations and are desperate for some small insight into how to cope. Toward the end of Johnson's fine book, she is upset that someone has complained about her being a difficult person.

"Oh, no," her father replies. "You're easy to deal with. As long as you get exactly what you want." Brava.

Too Late to Die Young can proudly take its place among these other important books. ·

James Reston Jr.'s book about his handicapped daughter, "Fragile Innocence: A Father's Memoir of his Daughter's Courageous Journey," will be published next winter.