Laurence Joel Eigner was born in Swampscott, Massachusetts. He is a spastic and has been confined since birth to his bed or a wheelchair as a result of cerebral palsy. Until 1978, he lived with his parents on the ground floor of their house in a town on the Massachusetts North Shore. The hardest part of his childhood, he recalls, was the physiotherapy sessions at Children's Hospital in Boston. He was educated at home and in Massachusetts Hospital School from 1939 to 1941. In 1961-1962, he was in and out of Massachusetts General Hospital for three operations on his spine. These visits seemed to him a vacation from his parents, the hospital itself a resort hotel. He has taken correspondence courses from the University of Chicago. In 1978, he moved to Berkeley, California, where he lives two miles away from a brother.

For as long as he can remember, language has been...