Entries a Client Called Noah

By Paul Gray

A word for those who may be arriving late: this book is a sequel to A Child Called Noah (1972) and A Place for Noah (1978). Like its predecessors, A Client Called Noah takes shape as a journal kept by Novelist and Screenwriter Josh Greenfeld. He jots down information about himself, his Japanese wife Foumi and their first son Karl. But the day-to-day entries never stray very far from Noah, the second son, who is severely brain damaged.

Greenfeld the father knows his family has been visited by a private tragedy; Greenfeld the writer understands that the ordeal of caring for Noah calls into question everything that passes for normal. Extreme situations clarify the muddles of the middle ground. The author, past 50 and worried about his blocked coronary artery, asks himself, "What do I want out of life?" and answers, " 'Life itself.' Which really, for alleged sophistication of my brain, puts me in Noah's shoes. So why should his life be worth anything less than mine?"

From January 1977 to November 1980, Greenfeld records what goes on in his house in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Both sons enter their teens, and Karl, who gets there first, begins outraging his father with typical adolescent behavior. After one acrimonious argument, the author manages a desperate joke: "This family could be worse. Noah could be normal." But Noah is not. "It is no fun," Greenfeld notes, "to have him pull hair right out of your scalp and then put it in his mouth and swallow it." And Noah is growing physically, if not mentally. Someday soon the parents will not be able to control him.

But they do not want their child spending his life in the "back ward of a state hospital." So the Greenfelds vacillate over "what to do about Noah." Gallows humor provides occasional refuge. The entry for June 15, 1980, reads in its entirety: "I've spent Father's Day wondering how I could kill Noah and hang the rap on Karl."

No happy endings seem promised here, but a final chapter and postscript provide several, including the awarding last year of Japan's most prestigious literary prize to Foumi for a book about the experiences of a mother with a handicapped child. And Noah has found a place, not only in real life but in the minds of those who, thanks to his parents, have come to know him.