Your Book Review: Two Arms and a Head

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

Content warning: body horror, existential devastation, suicide. This book is an infohazard that will permanently alter your view of paraplegia.

The Death of a Newly-Paraplegic Philosopher

For me, paraplegia and life itself are not compatible. This is not life, it is something else.

In May of 2006, philosophy student Clayton Schwartz embarks on a Pan-American motorcycle trip for the summer before law school. He is 30 years old and in peak physical condition.

He makes it as far south as Acapulco in Mexico before crashing into a donkey that had wandered into the road.

The impact crushes his spinal cord at the T5 vertebra, rendering him paralyzed from the nipples down.

On Sunday, February 24, 2008, he commits suicide.

In the year and a half in between, he writes Two Arms and a Head, his combination memoir and suicide note.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-two-arms-and-a-head