Jonathan Danby has quite a few more claims to fame that the average foreigner in Guadalajara.
First of all, he is a young man from South Africa — in itself, a major distinction in a city that attracts few visitors from the southern hemisphere.
Danby came here in 2008, bitten by the adventure bug, following an intrepid girlfriend, and trying to put an unfortunate encounter with a brain tumor firmly behind him.
But when the tumor proved more persistent than hoped, Danby stayed in Guadalajara, got medical treatment in the public and private systems, did better than doctors predicted, rescued a feisty kitten from Tonalá, named his tumor after it, and, most recently, wrote a book about it (the tumor) — “Life with Stanley.” The title seems to evoke John Steinbeck’s travel book “Travels with Charley” (a standard poodle), written when Steinbeck was in a delicate condition due to heart disease, and the movie “Harry and Tonto,” about the elderly Harry’s sojourn with his cat Tonto, as both face debilitation.
Danby has creative abilities and a facility with language, attested by his education in marketing, a prizewinning sound logo for which he received a trip to Germany (providing the backdrop for his first brush with the tumor) and the creative writing he has done in Mexico.
But “Life with Stanley” never had literary pretensions, according to Danby and his mother Nicky, who share an airy apartment near Mercado Juarez with Stanley (the cat and the tumor). Instead, it is a stream-of-consciousness memoir, an amalgam of recollections written more or less in chronological order and tinged with a light humor that comes of realizing that “if you get one [brain tumor] once in this lifetime, you really do have bad luck, and family, friends and strangers will be out there praying for you. A life’s lesson will be learnt and you will emerge stronger and wiser and with a more positive outlook on life” — phrases young Danby wrote about learning of the tumor in 2001 and feeling relief at finally understanding the reason he had felt so depressed the previous year and a half.
Danby says that he began writing the book sporadically about three years ago and enjoyed the process.
“It was a labor of love. You were very disciplined,” Nicky Danby said to her son. “It marks the changes in your brain as you read the book.”
“I wrote it with one hand,” Jonathan explained, since a midnight encounter with a sharp dresser edge had damaged motor abilities on the right side of his body and put him into a wheelchair, something that even numerous, earlier surgeries had not accomplished.
“I chose the cover photo [of himself on a beach holding a surfboard] because of the contrast with the present. I’m walking, I’m active.”
As the cat Stanley puts in an appearance at Jonathan’s apartment, wandering affectionately around his feet, he says that he named the tumor after the cat “because they’re both mysterious, stealthy and dangerous.
“Stanley sometimes attacks my ankles without warning,” he explains.
Danby notes that he has sold about 50 copies of the book so far, which he published using Amazon’s system Create Space.
“This is one of the best books about struggling with illness that I’ve ever read,” said one reviewer there. “Danby is a good writer, with a great sense of humor as he relates some of the ups and downs of his adventures with Stanley.”
“Living with Stanley” is available in paperback for $US5 on Amazon. It has large print and Kindle editions.