What's Wrong With Dorfman?
 John Blumenthal
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2000 Farmer Street Press
 ISBN: 0312311885

Martin Dorfman is a screenwriter who has suddenly developed a series of elusive, incapacitating symptoms. That he might be burnt-out or kicking his own bucket raises new worries & all he wants is to find a tidy title for what ails him. To this end he insists that his long-suffering doctor practise every known marvel of modern medicine with hilarious if fruitless results until he skeptically wanders into unexplored alternatives.

We've all experienced that paradoxical place where we hope our doctors find something wrong & yet...pray there really isn't anything & yet...those symptoms just won't go away!

Dorfman has arrived at the apex of his life: what used to work no longer does; his wife & children are departing for a long vacation with her family; he's on his own & he's having flashbacks!

John Blumenthal has written a fast, funny story! He has a rhythm that will knock your socks up over your knees! Humor tends to have a sober side, a serious vein that makes laughing even more ticklish! Like the embarrassment & hilarity at getting a giggle at a funeral! For Martin Dorfman the buzzards circling overhead are laughing at his frenetic chase for a clean bill of health. Just when he thinks he's got it, bam! The symptoms are back in full bloom as too the over-powering memories.

Dorfman has a fine case of PTFS - post traumatic father syndrome & as he remembers in mile-a-minute monologues & hysterical philosophies, he seems to speak in a voice that could only be Mel Gibson in high gear.

John Blumenthal has not written a medical mystery although his repartee between patient & doctor is thrilling! Martin Dorfman's quest for answers is actually a well written, very funny saga of a man who uses his mind to earn his living & that mind seems to have a mind of its own & can only focus on mortality & the absurdity of the father-son relationship.

Being of a certain age, I had an inkling of what was wrong with Dorfman - it in no way detracted from Dorfman's Candid-ish wanderings in the wilderness of waiting rooms where he wrestles with moral dilemmas he really doesn't need; to being played by his agent & a Big Hollywood Fellow while his script is grotesquely altered; to teetering on the adultery line; to unprecedented calls with his sister.

After reading What's Wrong With Dorfman? I guarantee you will never be able to wash your hands without thinking of Martin's father. You will never be able to put your spouse & kids into a 'plane & cheerfully wave them off & you will never be able to look your doctor in the eye & keep a straight face!

This is a fine family fugue fraught with every Red Flag known to the children of Adam & Eve. The best of both worlds: - reading & situation-comedy!

A very satisfying read! May every doctor have enough of a sense of humor to read this one! For the rest of us? Read it & weep the tears of the truly entertained!

Do catch my Interview with author John Blumenthal

Also by John Blumenthal:
The Official Hollywood Handbook
Love's Reckless Rash (Co-author)
The Case of the Hardboiled Dicks
The Tinseltown Murders
Hollywood High: The History of America's Most Famous Public School
(07/02/00)

Rebecca