the functioning demented alcoholic

The fullest single portrait of the disease at its source — the father whose alcoholism the whole inherited-disease thread runs down from. Orin's does-he-function defense inadvertently draws the clinical picture: daily drunkenness to blindness, two hours of naked shaking under a blanket, the delirium-tremens delusions elaborate enough to send him impersonating doctors — all of it running concurrent with founding an academy and inventing anti-fog glass. The point Orin can't see is the one the book keeps making: JOI functioned magnificently and drank himself to the microwave anyway, and the son who'd later name his own tennis-vs-getting-high choice is watching this from inside the same house.