The Secret Loves of An American Hunchback

About the Book

Although ecstatic about having just received the prestigous Oscar for best supporting actor of the year, Attila, the pronouncedly hunchbacked Hungarian Jew, was not truly happy not ful-filled.  He loved Helen, and she adored him, but he avoided the commitment of marriage because of his powerful fears and the subconscious hauntings that sweep him relentlessly to his internalized destiny.

Driven by his all-consuming identification with the agonies and plight of tens of millions of deformed/disfigured/handicapped Americans Attila envisions himself as privileged by fate to be the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of these people and is to lead them to freedom from the Holocaust of the dual-discrimination trained against them by the American culture, that is now cruelly destroying them.

Attila organizes and leads a controversial and sensational, well publicized, sit-in protest demonstration against the airlines at Chicago’s O’ Hare Airfield for not hiring deformed/disfigured/handicapped stewardesses, attendants, PR people, executives or using them as models advertising.  While still a graduate student at Michigan State U., he leads a thousand followers, volunteers and sympathizers from other oppressed minorities to galvanize national attention by having his people chain themselves to the toilets and urinals of the rest rooms of all the terminals of O’Hare.  Attila was arrested and jailed for vehemently defying police orders to call off the demonstrators.  This made him and his espoused cause instantly popular because the sympathetic mass media widely covered the action, even following him to jail and the court room.

Fresh from his euphoric triumphs at O’Hare, Attila capitalizes on becoming an instant celebrity by leading a public demonstration in downtown Chicago.  He leads a group, which had grown larger than at the airport demonstration because of all the attendant sensational publicity.  Costumed to somewhat resemble Jesus Christ and riding a mule, he leads the peaceful throng chanting religious songs through the streets of Chicago to the Catholic cathedral.  Stopping at the base of the cathedral entrance steps, cordowed off by the police, Attila flings a copy of the Code of Cannon Laws and other official church documents on the steep flight of steps of the cathedral.  He raises his arms to heaven imploringly, asking God to strike down those who were responsible for making churches in accessible to the handicapped, excluding the deformed/disabled/handicapped from the clergy and then hypocritically preaching the dignity and sanctity of all humans.

His business tycoon paternal grandfather hates him because of his Hungarian Jewish mother and because he is the only deformed member of an elite family.  He disowns and disinherits the blacksheep grandson entirely after hearing of the publicized demonstrations, feeling that it shamed the proud family.  Attila widens the rift by renouncing his grandfather for being a godless bigot, changes his name to his mother’s family name, publicly flaunting his Hungarian Jewish origins.

In love with Helen, Attila, nevertheless, womanizes insatiably.  She is hurt by this but keeps forgiving him initially.  She reasons that the pain and shock of being ridiculed and denigrated by cruel people that did not know the real him most of his life made him oversexed...

About the Author

John J. Imre, Ph.D. was born in Hungary just before WWII. His family was condemned to a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust for being Hungarian Jews. Barely managing to survive extermination by the occupying Germans, the author immigrated to the U.S.A. –only to face yet another Holocaust. He has had to live with the destructive dual-discrimination the American culture openly practices against its own deformed/disfigured/handicapped. John J. Imre received his university degrees from Valparaiso U. and Michigan State U. He has been a professor teaching both undergraduate and graduate students at several universities, most recently at U. of Wisconsin Green Bay. He has also consulted, wrote articles for professional journals and newspapers. He holds the U.S. Patent for the world’s most energy-efficient refrigeration system. And he has years of entrepreneurial experience creating and marketing arts and crafts with his artist/teacher wife Judy.