cover image Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot: The Autobiography of a Dangerous Man

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot: The Autobiography of a Dangerous Man

John Callahan, David Kelly. William Morrow & Company, $16.95 (219pp) ISBN 978-1-55710-010-8

Callahan, whose quirky and irreverent cartoons attract a national following, describes his life as a quadriplegic with mordant, relentless and utterly unsentimental humor. Even before the accident that left him paralyzed, Callahan was on a self-destructive trajectory. An adolescent alcoholic, a youth in rebellion against authority, including his adoptive parents and his church, the author had his life forever changed when at age 21 he became a quadriplegic. In the course of his long rehabilitation and his continuing struggles with alcoholism, his endurance was bolstered by self-directed humor. As his sense of himself reemerged, Callahan undertook a search for his birth mother and now enjoys a healing of the break with his adoptive parents and siblings. The 60 of his cartoons reproduced here illustrate his life in Portland, Ore., where he has ``twice the drive of the average able-bodied person.'' First serial to Mother Jones. (May)