The Doctors’ Book Club Adam Johnson The Orphan Master’s Son After her son was arrested by the secret police, Anna Akhmatova spent seventeen months waiting outside the Leningrad prisons for news of his wellbeing. Standing next to scores of other women similarly hoping to hear that their loved ones were alive, Akhmatova composed “Requiem,” a lyrical […]
Category: Literature and medicine
Claire McDaniel and Daniel Marchalik: Haruki Murakami’s The Colorless Tsuluru Tazaki and the Complexity of Grief
The Doctors’ Book Club Haruki Murakami’s The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Invoking the ubiquity of sadness, Emily Dickinson writes: “I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes – I wonder if It weighs like Mine – Or has an Easier size.” Universal and elusive, everyone’s grief is both familiar and […]
When Breath Becomes Air: A book review by Salil Patel
When Dr Paul Kalanithi (pictured) was 36, and with most of his neurosurgical training complete, his life was finally beginning to take the form he had anticipated. Just as pieces of the puzzle were shifting toward an idealistic future, classic symptoms of malignancy emerged. Scans confirmed the severity of the situation: he had stage IV […]
Margaret Cooter: Suffering for art
It is a truth generally acknowledged that artists must suffer for their art. Also, it is widely believed (in the art community at least) that good art has its basis in the artist’s unique personal experience—and, especially among artists and critics, that a viewer is needed to “complete” the work, in that they will bring […]