Triumphing Over His Chaotic Speech : STUTTERING: A Life Bound Up in Words by Marty Jezer; Basic Books; $23, 266 pages

“Does stuttering bother me?” asks Marty Jezer.

“For most of my life,” he writes, “I would have answered this question with phony composure and practiced calm. I would flash my most ingratiating smile and swallow my lie.

“ ‘Nuh-nuh-nuh-nope!’ People would then tell me how brave I was and how wonderful it was that I could have such a severe disability and not let it bother me. Did I bask in their compliment?

“Yup!

“Did I believe them?

“Nope. And once the glow of my deceit faded, the truth would kick in. I would then feel shamed, embarrassed, stupid, scared.. . .The truthful answer was that my stuttering was the defining fact of my life. It was my shadow, a ghost, the darkness within. . . .”

How Jezer finally dispelled that darkness after years of struggle is the subject of this fascinating book. As Jezer tells his own story he gives us the many theories about why people stutter and the various methods tried over the years to overcome stuttering.

Jezer is a writer by trade, the author of biographies of Abbie Hoffman and Rachel Carson. He writes with bounce and humor.

Some people suggested to him that he stutters because his family in New York talked so much and so fast, always interrupting one another.

He gives us one family conversation:

“I was the one,” he tells us, “who threw out the opening gambit. ‘I visited Grace Paley the other night.’ Grace Paley is a friend of mine and a well-known short story writer. My intent, I am embarrassed to say, was to impress upon my mother and my aunt and uncle that I was friends with a famous writer. I didn’t get very far.

“ ‘Isn’t that Paley’s wife, the head of CBS, William Paley? I thought she was dead,’ my mother replied.

“ ‘No, that’s Babe . . .’ I started to explain, but was interrupted by my aunt, who said, ‘Paley, yes, he donated a wing to the Metropolitan, remember? We went to see that show, that. . . .

“ ‘There’s no Paley wing at the museum,’ my uncle corrected. ‘You mean the Sackler.’

“ ‘What show?’ my mother interrupted. She was still with Babe whose husband Bill owned CBS.

“ ‘Mondrian,’ answered my aunt. ‘No, no, he’s geometry, the little squares. It was Giacometti! . . .’ ”

Jezer is now in his mid-50s. After having undergone not a few therapies by people with different theories about stuttering, he now believes that for severe stutterers like himself, perhaps one out of five, stuttering is a result of confusing signals the brain sends itself complicated by one’s psychological reaction to the physiological manifestations.

“The production of speech, it would seem,” he writes, “has nothing to do with the production of ideas. The speed and clarity of my ideas sometimes astonish me . . . in . . . my internal discourse, I’m incredibly fluent. It’s only when I begin to speak that chaos overwhelms the words.”

But bit by bit, in a show of determination that is both daunting and inspiring to read about, Jezer pulled himself up out of the chaos.

And in the end he got great emotional support and help in controlling his stuttering through the stutterers’ self-help movement that has emerged in recent years. His book concludes with a list of ways and places to get help.