When You Are Engulfed in Flames
David Sedaris, 2008
Little, Brown & Co.
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316154680
Summary
Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina.
In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life—having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds—to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times). (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 26, 1956
• Where—Johnson City, New York, USA
• Education—B.F.A., Art Institute of Chicago
• Awards—Thurber Prize; Time Humorist of the Year;
Advocate Lambda Award.
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
According to Time Out New York, "David Sedaris may be the funniest man alive." He's the sort of writer critics tend to describe not in terms of literary influences and trends, but in terms of what they choked on while reading his latest book. "I spewed a mouthful of pastrami across my desk," admitted Craig Seligman in his New York Times review of Naked.
Sedaris first drew national attention in 1992 with a stint on National Public Radio, on which he recounted his experiences as a Christmas elf at Macy's. He discussed "the code names for various posts, such as 'The Vomit Corner,' a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree" and confided that his response to "I'm going to have you fired" was the desire to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed." The radio pieces were such a hit that Sedaris, then working as a house cleaner, started getting offers to write movies, soap operas and Seinfeld episodes.
In subsequent appearances on NPR, Sedaris proved he wasn't just a velvet-clad flash in the pan; he's also wickedly funny on the subjects of smoking, speed, shoplifting and nervous tics. His work began appearing in magazines like Harper's and Mirabella, and his first book Barrel Fever, which included "SantaLand Diaries," was a bestseller. "These hilarious, lively and breathtakingly irreverent stories...made me laugh out loud more than anything I've read in years," wrote Francine Prose in the Washington Post Book World.
Since then, each successive Sedaris volume has zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists. In Naked, he recounts odd jobs like volunteering at a mental hospital, picking apples as a seasonal laborer and stripping woodwork for a Nazi sympathizer. The stocking stuffer-sized Holidays on Ice collects Sedaris' Christmas-themed work, including a fictional holiday newsletter from the homicidal stepmother of a 22-year-old Vietnamese immigrant ("She arrived in this house six weeks ago speaking only the words 'Daddy,' 'Shiny' and 'Five dollar now'. Quite a vocabulary!!!!!").
But Sedaris' best pieces often revolve around his childhood in North Carolina and his family of six siblings, including the brother who talks like a redneck gangsta rapper and the sister who, in a hilarious passage far too dirty to quote here, introduces him to the joys of the Internet. Sedaris' recent book Me Talk Pretty One Day describes, among other things, his efforts to learn French while helping his boyfriend fix up a Normandy farmhouse; he progresses "from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. 'Is thems the thoughts of cows?' I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window."
Sedaris has been compared to American humorists such as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Dorothy Parker; Publisher's Weekly called him "Garrison Keillor's evil twin." Pretty heady stuff for a man who claims there are cats that weigh more than his IQ score. But as This American Life producer Ira Glass once pointed out, it would be wrong to think of Sedaris as "just a working Joe who happens to put out these perfectly constructed pieces of prose." Measured by his ability to turn his experiences into a sharply satirical, sidesplittingly funny form of art, David Sedaris is no less than a genius.
Extras
• Sedaris got his start in radio after This American Life producer Ira Glass saw him perform at Club Lower Links in Chicago. In addition to his NPR commentaries, Sedaris now writes regularly for Esquire.
• Sedaris's younger sister Amy is also a writer and performer; the two have collaborated on plays under the moniker "The Talent Family." Amy Sedaris has appeared onstage as a member of the Second City improv troupe and on Comedy Central in the series Strangers with Candy.
• If I weren't a writer, I'd be a taxidermist," Sedaris said in a chat on Barnes and Noble.com. According to the Boston Phoenix, his collection of stuffed dead animals includes a squirrel, two fruit bats, four Boston terriers and a baby ostrich.
• When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, he's what he said:
I guess it would be Cathedral by Raymond Carver. His sentences are very simple and straightforward, and he made writing seem deceptively easy—the kind of thing anyone could do if they put their mind to it. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Sedaris tallies up the last 25 years, the prime of his life, and isn't impressed by the sum: "How had 9,125 relatively uneventful days passed so quickly," he writes, "and how can I keep it from happening again?" As usual, Sedaris has lots of answers to the first question but not many to the second in this delightful compilation of essays circling the theme of death and dying, with nods to the French countryside, art collecting and feces.
Vanessa Grigoriadis - New York Times
David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art.
Christian Science Monitor
The Sedaris genius is to be incredibly particular, not to mention peculiar, and yet take fantastic and rapid leaps to the universal.... He'll be telling some weird story, and all of a sudden, just at the end, it turns out not only to be about him, but also about you. He's a master at evoking fellow feeling.
Nancy Dalva - New York Observer
(Audio version.) Sedaris's sparkling essays always shimmer more brightly when read aloud by the author. And his expert timing, mimicry and droll asides are never more polished than during live performances in front of an audience. Happily, four of the 22 pieces are live recordings, and listeners can hear Sedaris's energy increase from the roaring, rolling laughter of the appreciative audience. Sedaris's studio recording of his 10-page "Of Mice and Men" runs 16 minutes, while the live recording of "Town and Country," which runs the same length in print, expands to 22 minutes thanks to an audience that often doesn't let him finish a sentence without making him pause for laughter to subside. The studio recordings usually begin with an acoustic bass and brief sound effect (a buzzing fly, the lighting of a cigarette, the clinking of ice in a drink, etc.). Sedaris's brilliant magnum opus, "The Smoking Section" (about his successful trip to Tokyo to quit smoking) stretches across the final two CDs.
Publishers Weekly
(Audio version.) Sedaris once again enchants and amuses with his observations about the absurdity of ordinary life situations in this, his sixth collection of essays. As wonderful as it is reading Sedaris's work, it's an even greater pleasure listening to him read it himself, as he provides just the right delivery and cadence to maximize the humor (four of the recordings are live). Track listings with titles are printed on each CD, allowing listeners to find their favorites easily. Highly recommended for all collections.
Library Journal
This latest collection of 22 essays proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he’s also getting better. True, the terrain is familiar.... Nevertheless, Sedaris’ best stuff will still—after all this time—move, surprise, and entertain. —Jerry Eberle
Booklist
Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life. The author's faithful fans probably won't be turned off by his copyright-page admission that these pieces, most seen before in the New Yorker, are only "realish." They feel real, whether Sedaris is revealing his troubling obsession with a certain species of spider or describing a lift from a tow-truck driver who kept saying things like, "yes, indeedy, a little oral give-and-take would feel pretty good right about now"—the ring of truth adds to the book's horrified-laughter factor. The author still draws from the well of familial tragicomedy in pieces that dissect his parents' taste in modern art ("Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool") and their reactions to what he wrote about them in his first book ("fifty pages later, they were boarding up the door and looking for ways to disguise themselves"). Most of the essays, however, chronicle expatriate life in England, France and Japan with his long-suffering and improbably talented boyfriend Hugh. Sedaris positions himself as a hapless Bertie Wooster to Hugh's Jeeves, lazily allowing his partner's mother to clean their apartment ("I just sit in a rocker, raising my feet every now and then so she can pass the vacuum") and marveling at Hugh's interest in, well, doing things. A highpoint is "All the Beauty You Will Ever Need," which starts as a rant about his boyfriend's ludicrous self-sufficiency ("Hugh beats underpants against river rocks or decides that it might be fun to grind his own flour") but twists into a sharp declaration of love that's all the more touching for its lack of sentimentality. Just when Sedaris seems to have disappeared down the rabbit hole of ironic introspection, he delivers a cracking blow of insight that leaves you reeling.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for When You Are Engulfed in Flames:
1. Of course, the best place to start with Sedaris is to recount the funniest, LOL moments in his books. At which parts did you find yourself laughing out loud? Any favorites?
2. Sedaris tallies up the days over the past 25 years, feeling he hasn't accomplished much...and he'd like to prevent the same number of "uneventful" days from occurring again. Of course, this is a little precious given that Sedaris has a fabulous writing and performance career. But nonetheless, it is a cry of angst in a typical midlife crisis. Ever feel that way yourself? At any time, at any age? What's the antidote—does Sedaris suggest one? Can you?
3. Sedaris says of his relationship with his partner Hugh, that they are "two decent people trapped in a rather dull play." How does he then parlay what at first seems like a typical litany of complaints about a loved one into a profession of love? What does Sedaris come to realize about the nature of love, at least his love for Hugh?
4. In "The Monster Mash," Sedaris recounts his time spent researching a story in the medical examiner's office. He says the experience was a matter of "seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: no one is safe." The realization hit him that soon or later he is going to die. Did you find that chapter funny or poignant or upsetting or .... what?
5. Talk about how Sedaris finally decides to quit smoking after 30 years. He writes about it in three phases. For any non-smokers, does it ring true? Did you find his account funny or realistic?
6. As always, Sedaris gets good mileage out of his eccentric but loving family. This time he talks about his parents' reaction to his first book. How would it feel to have a writer/humorist/ social critic in your family? How fair is it of a writer to use family members as fodder?
7. If you have read or heard any of Sedaris's other works, how does this one compare? Which was your favorite Sedaris book/recording?
8. For a book club meeting, it would be fun to listen to a number of selections from the audio version of When You Are Engulfed.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Jon Krakauer, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307386045
Summary
The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man’s haunting journey.
Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan.
Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman’s own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman’s wife, other family members, and the American public for five weeks following his death. During this time, President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman’s name to promote his administration’s foreign policy. Long after Tillman’s nationally televised memorial service, the Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had “probably” been killed by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and who was responsible.
In Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan to render an intricate mosaic of this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death. Before he enlisted in the army, Tillman was familiar to sports aficionados as an undersized, overachieving Arizona Cardinals safety whose virtuosity in the defensive backfield was spellbinding. With his shoulder-length hair, outspoken views, and boundless intellectual curiosity, Tillman was considered a maverick. America was fascinated when he traded the bright lights and riches of the NFL for boot camp and a buzz cut. Sent first to Iraq—a war he would openly declare was “illegal as hell” —and eventually to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by complicated, emotionally charged, sometimes contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, patriotism, and masculine pride, and he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004, his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers.
Krakauer chronicles Tillman’s riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer’s storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering truths about men and war. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 2, 1954
• Where—Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
• Reared—Corvalis, Oregon
• Education—B.S., Hampshire College (Massachusetts)
• Awards—American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1999
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Krakauer was born as the third of five children. He competed in tennis at Corvallis High School and graduated in 1972. He went on to study at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, where in 1976 he received his degree in Environmental Studies. In 1977, he met former climber Linda Mariam Moore; they married in 1980 and now live in Seattle, Washington.
More
In 1974, Krakauer was part of a group of seven friends pioneering the Arrigetch Peaks of the Brooks Range in Alaska and was invited by American Alpine Journal to write about those experiences. Though he neither expected nor received a fee, he was excited when the Journal published his article. A year later, he and two others made the second ascent of The Moose's Tooth, a highly technical peak in the Alaska Range.
One year after graduating from college (1977), he spent three weeks by himself in the wilderness of the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska and climbed a new route on the Devils Thumb, an experience he described in Eiger Dreams and in Into the Wild.
Much of Krakauer's early popularity as a writer came from being a journalist for Outside magazine. In 1983, he was able to abandon part-time work as a fisherman and a carpenter to become a full-time writer. His freelance writing appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic Magazine, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Architectural Digest.
Into the Wild was published in 1996 and secured Krakauer's reputation as an outstanding adventure writer, spending more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, which was adapted for film (director Sean Penn) and released in 2007.
In 2003, Under the Banner of Heaven became Krakauer's third non-fiction bestseller. The book examines extremes of religious belief, particularly fundamentalist offshoots of Mormonism. The book inspired the documentary, Damned to Heaven.
2010 saw the publication of Where Men Win Glory, about former NFL football player Pat Tillman, who became a US Army Ranger after 9/11. Tillman was eventually killed in action under suspicious circumstances in Afghanistan. (Adapated from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Once Tillman lands in Afghanistan…Krakauer's narrative lifts off. The death of Tillman is handled deftly—and sad it is, the end of a series of errors and misjudgments, some of which border on the criminal…While most of the facts have been reported before, Krakauer performs a valuable service by bringing them all together—particularly those about the cover-up. The details, even five years later, are nauseating to read.
Dexter Filkins - New York Times
Krakauer—whose forensic studies of the Emersonian Man in books such as Into Thin Air and Into the Wild yield so much insight—has turned in a beautiful bit of reporting, documenting Tillman's life with journals and interviews with those close to him...Must be counted as the definitive version of events surrounding Tillman's death.
Los Angeles Times
Jon Krakauer has done his job well; Where Men Win Glory is a tough read...[He] has tackled a task that required the distillation and organization of volumes of disparate information. That he has fielded a coherent narrative is a victory. That he has made it compelling and passionate is a difficult blessing...In mining Tillman's life and death, Krakauer uncovers a story much more compelling than anything that could be spun.
The Denver Post
Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer's narrative of pro football player Pat Tillman's "odyssey," as he calls it, from the playing field to the battlefield, is nuanced, thorough, and chilling...[He] is up to the task of telling this brave man's story...Krakauer's tone is somber and judicious as he reports this ludicrous hijacking of the truth and its shameful cover-up, but the anger behind it charges every word. [He] has made sure that this shameful episode will not fade into obscurity and that Pat Tillman will be remembered for the man he truly was—and not as the faux symbol of a failed policy.
Portland Oregonian
In this masterful work, bestselling adventure writer Jon Krakauer renders an intimate portrait of Tillman and brilliantly captures the sadness, madness, and heroism of the post-9/11 world...Drawing on interviews with family, fellow soldiers and correspondence, Krakauer's page-turning account captures every detail—Tillman's extraordinary character, including the "tragic vitures" that led him to give up a comfortable life and athletic stardom for the army; the harshness of military training and life; the rugged terrain of remote Afghanistan— and, of course, the ravages of war.Most critically, by telling Tillman's personal story and blowing apart the "cynical cover-up" that followed his killing, Krakauer lays bare the best—and worst—of America's War on Terror.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Where Men Win Glory:
1. Pat Tillman was a complex figure. Talk about the kind of man he was. What were the personal qualities that led him to forego a life of wealth and put his life on the line in the U.S. military? Where some of those traits evident in his childhood? If so, which ones?
2. Describe his sense of moral obligation after 9/11. Why did he feel it was vital to take part, personally, in the fight against Al Quaeda and the Taliban?
3. Tillman was first sent to Iraq. What were his feelings about that war?
4. What did Tillman reveal both about himself and the war in his journal and letters back home?
5. What, if anything, did you learn from Krakauer's book about Iraq and Afghanistan? Did you find his diversions about those countries, their history and politics, enlightening? Or did you feel they dragged down the pace of the overall narrative?
6. Talk about the way in which Tillman lost his life, the series of events—as well as the errors and misjudgments made by those far from the line of fire—that led to the tragedy. How common is friendly fire?
7. How did military commanders and politicians make use of Tillman's death? What were they hoping to achieve...or avoid? How was the cover-up promulgated...and what led to its eventual unraveling?
8. What were Tillman's own suspicions about the possibility of becoming a poster boy should he die in battle?
9. What was your experience reading this book? Were your emotions charged as you worked your way through the story? If so, in what ways?
10. Despite the manner of Tillman's death, can he still be considered an American hero? Is everyone who dies in the line of duty a hero? Or is "hero" a designation we hold in reserve for special circumstances?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks. )
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My Own Country: A Doctor's Story
Abraham Verghese, 1994
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679752929
Summary
Nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City had always seemed exempt from the anxieties of modern American life. But on August 11, 1985, the local hospital treated its first AIDS patient, and, before long, a crisis that had once seemed an "urban problem" had arrived in the town to stay.
Working in Johnson City was Abraham Verghese, a young Indian doctor specializing in infectious diseases. Of necessity, he became the local AIDS expert, soon besieged by a shocking number of male and female patients whose stories come to occupy his mind, and even take over his life. Verghese brought a singular perspective to Johnson City: as a doctor unique in his abilities; as an outsider who could talk to people suspicious of local practitioners; above all, as a writer of grace and compassion who saw that what was happening in this conservative community was both a medical and a spiritual emergency.
Out of his experience comes a startling but ultimately uplifting portrait of the American heartland as it confronts—and surmounts—its deepest prejudices and fears. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Abraham Verghese is Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was the founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, where he is now an adjunct professor. He is the author, most recently, of Cutting for Stone (2009), as well as The Tennis Partner, a New York Times Notable Book. My Own Country was a 1994 NBCC Finalist and a Time Best Book of the Year, A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has published essays and short stories that have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and Granta. He lives in Palo Alto, California. (From the publisher.)
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is the Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. He was born in Ethiopia to parents from Kerala in south India who, along with hundreds of Keralites, worked as teachers.
Dr. Verghese began his medical training in Ethiopia, but his education was interrupted during the civil unrest there when the Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed and a military government took over. He came to America with his parents and two brothers (his elder brother George Verghese is now an engineering professor at MIT) and worked as an orderly for a year before going to India where he completed his medical studies at Madras Medical College in Madras, now Chennai.
In his written work, he refers to his time working as an orderly in a hospital in America as an experience that confirmed his desire to finish his medical training; the experience had given him a first-hand view of patients' experience in the hospital with its varying levels of treatment and care. He has said the insights he gained from this work helped him "imagine the suffering of patients," which became a motto for some of his later work.
After finishing his medical degree from Madras University in 1979, he came to the U.S. as one of hundreds of foreign medical graduates, or FMGs, from India seeking open residency positions here. As he described it in a New Yorker article, "The Cowpath to America," many FMGs often had to work in the less popular hospitals and communities, and frequently in inner cities. He opted for a residency in a brand-new program in Johnson City, Tennessee affiliated with East Tennessee State University. He was a resident there from 1980 to 1983, and then secured a coveted fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine in 1983, where he worked for two years at Boston City Hospital and where he saw the early signs of the urban epidemic of HIV in that city.
Returning to Johnson City in 1985 as assistant professor of medicine (he later became a tenured associate professor there), he encountered the first signs of a second epidemic, that of rural AIDS. His work with the patients he cared for and his insights into his personal transformation from being "homoignorant," as he describes it, to having a understanding of his patients resulted a few years later in his first book.
Exhausted from the strain of his work with his patients, with his first marriage under strain and having by then begun to write seriously, he decided to take a break and applied to and was accepted to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. He had cashed in his retirement plan and his tenured position to go to Iowa City with his young family.
After Iowa, he accepted a position as Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived for the next 11 years. Despite his title, he was the sole infectious disease physician for a busy county hospital—Thomason Hospital—for many years. His skills and commitment to patient care resulted in his being awarded the Grover E. Murray Distinguished Professorship of Medicine at the Texas Tech School of Medicine.
During these years in El Paso, he also wrote and published his first bestselling book, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, about his experiences in East Tennessee, but also pondering themes of displacement, Diaspora, responses to foreignness and the many individuals and families affected by the AIDS epidemic. This book was one of five chosen as Best Book of the Year by Time magazine and it was later made into a movie by Mira Nair with TV Lost series star Naveen Andrews playing his role.
His second book, The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, also written during his time in El Paso, is another eloquently written personal story, this time about his friend and tennis partner, a medical resident in recovery from drug addiction. The story deals with the ultimate death of his friend and explores the issue and prevalence of physician drug abuse. It also concludes the account of the breakdown of his first marriage, an integral part of the narrative in both My Own Country and The Tennis Partner.
In 2002, Dr. Verghese went to San Antonio, Texas as founding Director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he focused on medical humanities as a way to preserve the innate empathy and sensitivity that brings students to medical school but which is frequently repressed through the rigors of their training. In San Antonio, besides developing a formal humanities and ethics curriculum that was integrated into in all four years of study, he invited medical students to accompany him on bedside rounds as a way of demonstrating his conviction about the value of the physical examination in diagnosing patients and in developing a caring, two-way patient-doctor relationship that provides benefits not only to patients and their families but to the physician, as well. At San Antonio, he held the Joaquin Cigarroa Chair and the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professorship.
His deep interest in bedside medicine and his reputation as a clinician, teacher and writer led to his being recruited to Stanford University in 2007 as a tenured professor.
In 2009, Dr. Verghese published his first novel, Cutting for Stone.
His writing and work continue to explore the importance of bedside medicine, the ritual of the physical examination in the era of advanced technology, where as he notes frequently in his writing, the patient in the bed is often ignored in favor of the patient data in the computer. He is renowned at Stanford for his weekly bedside rounds, where he insists on examining patients without knowledge of their diagnosis to demonstrate the wealth of information available from the physical exam.
Dr. Verghese has three children, two grown sons by his first marriage and a third by his second marriage. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The greatest strength of this eloquently written book is its ability to weave together all those separate strands. It is at once a previously untold story of AIDS in America, a story of the South, a story of the modern-day immigrant experience in America and a story of a personal journey within the medical profession. Dr. Verghese illumines a number of landscapes here, and does it with more than a touch of the poet. He writes, for example, about the life inside the hospital—but not just any hospital. His greatest affection is reserved for the patients and staff of the Veteran's Administration Hospital, that perennial poor relation of the medical system; perhaps never has a V.A. hospital been written about with such glowing lyricism.
Perri Klass - New York Times Book Review
This extraordinary book is ostensibly "about" a doctor caring for persons with HIV/AIDS. That it is, but it is also a book containing multiple texts. It is a doctor's personal journey toward understanding the multiple meanings of HIV/AIDS for those who have it and those who care for them. It is the story of a physician, an Indian, born in Ethiopia to Christian expatriate teachers, [who has been] in America since 1980... trying to determine the meaning of "home." It is, at the same time, a glorious pastoral account of practicing medicine in Tennessee—here making a house call to Vicki and Clyde, whose trailer is perched on the side of a mountain, now traveling through the Cumberland Gap to a cinder-block house to see Gordon, another native son who has come home to die. On still another level it is the story of a man trying to understand what it is like to be gay; a man trying to integrate his passion for his work with his life at home; a man trying to explain to his wife (and sadly, even some of his peers) his commitment to caring for persons infected with the virus.
Literature, Arts and Medicine Database
When infectious-disease specialist Verghese, the Ethiopian-born son of Indian schoolteachers, emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Johnson City, Tenn., in the mid-1980s, he finally felt at peace "in my own country'' at last. But his work at the Johnson City Medical Center soon led him into a shadow world of Bible-belt AIDS, often without the support of his colleagues. Verghese discovered a local gay community that was then untested for the HIV virus. If revealed, these people's closeted relationships would have, writes Verghese, made them stand out "like Martians.'' The author tells the stories of several patients, including the gay man who must reconcile with his father and the "innocent'' man who has contracted AIDS through a contaminated blood transfusion but who, concerned about society's response to his plight, keeps his disease a secret even though he believes that "this thing, this virus, is from hell, from the devil himself.'' Verghese reveals his own confusions about homosexuality, immigrant identity and his wife's fears about his health. Writing with an outsider's empathy and insight, casting his chronicle in graceful prose, he offers a memorable tale that both captures and transcends time and place.
Publishers Weekly
In fall 1985 Verghese—who was born in Ethiopia of Indian parents—returned with his wife and newborn son to Johnson City, Tennessee, where he had done his internship and residence. As he watched AIDS infect the small town, he and the community learned many things from one another, including the power of compassion. An AIDS expert who initially had no patients, Verghese describes meeting gay men and then eventually others struggling with this new disease. Verghese's patients include a factory worker confronting her husband's AIDS, bisexuality, and her own HIV status and a religious couple infected via a blood transfusion attempting to keep their disease secret from their church and their children. This novelistic account, occasionally overly detailed, provides a heartfelt perspective on the American response to the spread of AIDS. —James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P . L .
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Verghese describes the early eighties, before AIDS had spun out of control, as "a time of unreal and unparalleled confidence, bordering on conceit, in the Western medical world, " [p. 24] in which doctors felt they had achieved "mastery over the human body"[p. 25]. How does the reality of AIDS undermine this ultra-modern, technological ideal of medicine? How does Verghese's idea of the doctor's role change during the course of the narrative? Do you believe that his turning back toward the older ideal of treating the whole patient, body and soul, might be a harbinger of a general medical trend?
2. When Verghese arrives in Johnson City, he says, "I knew no openly gay men. I only knew the stereotype" [p. 23]. What changes does his attitude toward homosexual men undergo during his years at the Miracle Center? How does Verghese's initial perception of himself as an outsider in Johnson City make him especially sensitive to his patients' problems with their families and community?
3. Johnson City in the mid-eighties is "a place where Jerry Falwell's pronouncement that homosexuals would 'one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven' was taken as a self-evident truth" [p. 56]. Yet when AIDS strikes people they love, many inhabitants of Johnson City prove remarkably supportive. How does their personal contact with the disease work to falsify the "gay" stereotype they previously held? Does Verghese, simultaneously, succeed in breaking stereotypes about "Falwell country" that readers themselves might hold? What other stereotypes does Verghese undermine in his story?
4. Verghese's story indicates that to feel part of a group is vitalto human survival and well-being. How do the various groups Verghese describes—the gay community, the TAP support group, the church, the medical fraternity, the expatriate Indian community—nourish and strengthen their members? Are they always nurturing, or do they also put up barriers between their members and the outside world? Is Verghese himself fully a member of, fully at home in, any of these groups?
5. How do the different members of Gordon's family react to his homosexuality and illness? How does each, in his or her different way, cope with Gordon's condition? In what way does Gordon typify the "generation of young men, raised to self-hatred" and their collective "voyage, the breakaway, the attempt to create places where they could live with pride" [pp. 402-403]?
6. "I heard different but strangely similar versions of this story from families of gay men: There was always the God-given talent that accompanied their God-given sexuality, always the special creativity and humor" [p. 92]. Verghese speculates on two possibilities: these qualities might be as biologically determined as sexuality, or they might be developed to compensate for the men's essential difference. What do you think of these ideas?
7. What is Verghese's reaction to Gordon's and Will's visions of Jesus? How does religion affect the way these patients deal with their disease? Does it help them to fight? Does it help them to come to terms with defeat? Does it ever hinder them from facing their problems truthfully?
8. Verghese comes to see AIDS "as the litmus test for nurses and physicians, a means of identifying who would and who wouldn't" [p. 105] provide treatment and, in so doing, risk their own health. Is there an excuse for the hostile attitude of nurses who don't want to treat AIDS patients? Should people who have committed themselves to careers as doctors or nurses be morally obligated to treat any and every patient? In Johnson City, just how deeply does the hospital staff's attitude towards AIDS change over the course of the four years Verghese describes?
9. When Ethan Nidiffer explains why he didn't alert his dentist to the fact that he was HIV-positive, Verghese admits that he "could certainly see his point of view" [p. 306]. What is your point of view on this issue? How much responsibility lies with the patient, and how much with the dentist? Should patients always be obliged to inform their doctors that they are HIV-positive, even if that means they may not find treatment?
10. How do Gordon, Fred, Ethan, and Raleigh differ in their visions of themselves as gay men and as part of a larger gay community? Can you see any parallels with Verghese and his own search for a community, a home?
11. Will and Bess Johnson see themselves as "innocent victims" of the disease—as opposed, by implication, to the gay men who also suffer from it. How might you explain Verghese's complex reaction to this notion? Do the Johnsons strike you as essentially more "innocent" than the gay men in the narrative? This issue relates to the way the cancer patients at the VA hospital are perceived as dying with honor, while so many HIV patients harbor feelings of shame. How are the concepts of honor and shame, innocence and guilt, addressed by the TAP members? By the Johnsons? By Rajani? By Verghese himself? Do these attitudes reflect those of the larger American culture?
12. Do you agree with Bess and Will's decision that secrecy about their HIV infection was vital? Why were they so overwhelmingly concerned with secrecy? What makes them able to draw comfort from their church even while assuming that their fellow church-goers would not stand by them in their illness? Do you blame Bess and Will for not speaking out and trying to help others who suffer from the disease, or do you think that they had every right to their privacy?
13. Because of his work, Verghese comes to believe that "our moments of true safety are rare." Is such a knowledge a handicap, or can it bring increased strength? How does the enormous change in Vickie McCray's life and character relate to this knowledge?
14. Do you believe that the situation Verghese describes in Johnson City accurately represents the situation for AIDS sufferers in the United States as a whole? If you have any experience with the disease, do you find that patients feel isolated, feel the need to keep their condition a secret? In your own community, does compassion outweigh prejudice? Are there adequate support resources for the HIV-positive? How do different members of the local and national government treat this volatile issue?
15. At the end of the book, Verghese states that AIDS work will always be his vocation. How does Verghese's powerful sense of mission and his unselfish giving of himself affect his family life? Is the sort of schedule he has undertaken necessarily incompatible with a full family life? How might a busy doctor's wife and children share in his professional life?
16. When Verghese arrives in Johnson City, he feels he has found a home, his "own country" [p. 46]. Does he still see it in this way at the end of the book? If so, why does he leave? How does the Malcolm Cowley poem placed at the beginning of the narrative apply to Verghese's personal quest?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Best of Friends: Martha and Me
Mariana Pasternak, 2010
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061661280
Summary
For more than two decades, Mariana Pasternak and Martha Stewart were nearly inseparable. They first met over a garden gate in Westport, Connecticut—two suburban wives wedded to successful men but with grand aspirations of their own.
Their friendship only deepened after their marriages ended in divorce. Drawn into a seductive world of privilege and adventure, Pasternak, who struggled as a working single mother, watched with admiration as Martha built an empire that would make her one of the richest women in America. The two women enjoyed amazing experiences, traveled the world together, and talked on a daily basis, sharing thoughts and feelings, plans and dreams. But as time passed, money, men, and the arrogance of wealth frayed the bonds of their friendship—until the final break came when Pasternak was called as a witness in the high-profile trial that ultimately brought about Stewart's conviction and prison sentence.
The Best of Friends: Martha and Me tells the story of an extraordinary friendship and its devastating aftermath with breathtaking candor. Every woman who has had a best female friend will see herself in this deeply personal memoir. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Mariana Pasternak grew up in Romania and immigrated to the United States as a political refugee. The mother of two daughters, she has been a biomedical engineer and has held other positions involving computer-based research and development. For the past twenty years, she has been working as a realtor in Connecticut, where she lives. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Pasternak winds up expressing even more affection for a special red Hermes handbag ("How I loved that bag!") than she does for the woman whose coattails she rode for more than 20 years.
New York Times
[A] spiky, entertaining memoir by Stewart’s former pal Mariana Pasternak.... This is an observant, dishy look at a world of luxury and privilege from the perspective of a woman who’s trying to justify—if only to herself—her years as a hanger-on.
Laurie Muchnick - Bloomberg
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for: The Best of Friends:
1. How does Martha Stewart come off in Pasternak's book? Has it changed you opinion of her? Have you come away with greater admiration of Stewart...or less?
2. What do you think of Mariana Pasternak?
3. What was Pasternak's motivation for penning the book? Is her view of Stewart an unbiased one? Is the book merely a kiss & tell book—gossipy and self-serving? Or does her memoir provide us with fascinating insights into one of the most powerful and remarkable women of our time?
4. How would you describe Pasternak and Stewart's friendship? What was the friendship built on—was it a genuine friendship? What did either woman gain from the relationship? What began to eat away at the bond between the two women—when did the first cracks begin to appear? How might you have fared in such a friendship, one in which the other half has a huge financial advantage?
5. What kind of mother, according to Pasternak, was Martha Stewart? Why did Pasternak never say anything to Stewart about her concerns? Why did she allow her own daughter to continue visiting the Stewart household unsupervised?
6. Talk about the 2004 Stewart trial and Pasternak's damaging testimony. On cross examination by Stewart's lawyer, Pasternak wavered, admitting, "I do not know if Martha said that or it's me who thought those words." Do you find it contradictory that six years later, Pasternak's memory has improved, if not regarding the trial, then on so many other points covered in her memoir? Or can this be explained by the fact that a writer's recall would vastly improve as a result of focusing on the act of writing?
7. Did you feel any envy, even just a twinge, reading about the high-end lifestyle lived by Martha Stewart? Any parts in particular—e.g., fame, food, travel, houses and furnishings? In other words, would it be fun to be Martha...or is it just the goodies that would be nice?
8. How does Pasternak describe Stewart's relationship with men and her proclivity toward sex? How is that the two women find themselves alone, for instance, on New Year's Eve in one of Martha's houses?
9. What was Pasternak's fascination with Andy Stewart? Why do Andy and Martha divorce? What happened to Pasternak's marriage and why?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs, 2002
Macmillan Picador
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312422271
Summary
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus.
So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed.
The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull an electroshock-therapy machine could provide entertainment.
The funny, harrowing and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances. (From the publisher.)
The 2006 film version stars Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening, Jill Clayburgh, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood.
Author Bio
• Birth—October 23, 1965
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—no formal beyond elementary school
• Currently—lives in New York and western Massachusetts
Although Augusten Burroughs achieved moderate success with his debut novel, Sellevision, it was his 2002 memoir, Running with Scissors, that catapulted him into the literary stratosphere. Indeed, few writers have spun a bizarre childhood and eccentric personal life into literary gold with as much wit and panache as Burroughs, whose harrowing accounts of dysfunction and addiction are offset by an acerbic humor readers and critics find irresistible.
Born Christopher Robison (he changed his name when he turned 18), Burroughs is the son of an alcoholic father who abandoned his family and a manic-depressive mother who fancied herself a poet in the style of Anne Sexton. At age 12, he was farmed out to his mother's psychiatrist, a deeply disturbed—and disturbing—man whose medical license was ultimately revoked for gross misconduct. In Running with Scissors, Burroughs recounts his life with the pseudonymous Finch family as an experience tantamount to being raised by wolves. The characters he describes are unforgettable: children of assorted ages running wild through a filthy, dilapidated Victorian house, totally unfettered by rules or inhibitions; a variety of deranged patients who take up residence with the Finches seemingly at will; and a 33-year-old pedophile who lives in the backyard shed and initiates an intense, openly homosexual relationship with the 13-year-old Burroughs right under the doctor's nose.
That he is able to wring humor and insight out of this shocking scenario is testimony to Burroughs's writing skill. Upon its publication in 2002, Scissors was hailed as "mordantly funny" (Los Angeles Times), "hilarious" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "sociologically suggestive and psychologically astute" (New York Times). The book became a #1 bestseller and was turned into a 2006 movie starring Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, and Joseph Fienes.
[Although the doctor who "raised" Burroughs was never named in the memoir, six members of the real-life family sued the author and his publisher for defamation, claiming that whole portions of the book were fabricated. Burroughs insisted that the book was entirely accurate but agreed in the 2007 settlement to change the wording of the author's note and acknowledgement in future editions of the book. He was never required to change a single word of the memoir itself.]
Since Running with Scissors, Burroughs has mined snippets of his life for more bestsellers, including further installments of his memoir (Dry, A Wolf at the Table) and several well-received collections of razor-sharp essays. His writing continues to appear in newspapers and magazines around the world, and he is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition.
Extras
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:
• When I was very young, maybe six or seven, I used to make little books out of construction paper and wallpaper. Then I'd sew the spine of the book with a needle and thread. Only after I had the actual book did I sit down with a pencil and write the text. I actually still have one of these little books and it's titled, obliquely, "Little Book."
• Well, all of a sudden I am obsessed with PMC. For those of you who think I am speaking about plastic plumbing fixtures, I am not. PMC stands for Precious Metal Clay. And it works just like clay clay. You can shape it into anything you want. But after you fire it, you have something made of solid 22k gold or silver. So you want to be very careful. Anyway, I plan to make dog tags. So there's something.
• I'm a huge fan of English shortbread cookies, of anything English really. I very nearly worship David Strathairn. And I'm afraid that if I ever return to Sydney, Australia, I may not return.
• I will never refuse potato chips or buttered popcorn cooked in one of those thingamajigs you crank on top of the stove.
• And my politics could be considered extreme, as I truly believe that people who molest or otherwise abuse children should be buried in pits. And I do believe our country has been served by white male presidents quite enough for the next few hundred years. I really could go on and on here, so I'd best stop.
• When asked about what book influenced him most as an author, here is his response:
Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz was the first book I read as an adult, at the age of twenty-four. Until this time, I'd never had the opportunity to sit down and read. Reading takes solitude and it takes focus. My life had been extremely chaotic. By the time I was twenty-four, I was already an active alcoholic. But during a brief period of sobriety, I went to a local bookstore and selected Midaq Alley out of all the other books, simply because I liked the cover. It turned out to be a profound experience for me. I was completely absorbed in the book, in the experience of reading. I felt transported from my life into a different, better life. From that moment forward, I was a heavy reader, often devouring three or four books a week. (Bio and interview from Barnes and Noble.)
Book Reviews
...a bawdy, outrageous, often hilarious account...In keeping with this book's dauntless comic timing, this guy doesn't miss a beat.
Janet Maslin - The New York Times
If you love Sedaris, you'll fold over laughing with Running with Scissors, a witty and hilarious memoir.
GENRE Magazine
Bookman gave me attention. We would go for long walks and talk about all sorts of things. Like how awful the nuns were in his Catholic school when he was a kid and how you have to roll your lips over your teeth when you give a blowjob," writes Burroughs (Sellevision) about his affair, at age 13, with the 33-year-old son of his mother's psychiatrist. That his mother sent him to live with her shrink (who felt that the affair was good therapy for Burroughs) shows that this is not just another 1980s coming-of-age story. The son of a poet with a "wild mental imbalance" and a professor with a "pitch-black dark side," Burroughs is sent to live with Dr. Finch when his parents separate and his mother comes out as a lesbian. While life in the Finch household is often overwhelming (the doctor talks about masturbating to photos of Golda Meir while his wife rages about his adulterous behavior), Burroughs learns "your life [is] your own and no adult should be allowed to shape it for you." There are wonderful moments of paradoxical humor Burroughs, who accepts his homosexuality as a teen, rejects the squeaky-clean pop icon Anita Bryant because she was "tacky and classless" as well as some horrifying moments, as when one of Finch's daughters has a semi-breakdown and thinks that her cat has come back from the dead. Beautifully written with a finely tuned sense of style and wit the occasional clich ("Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal") stands out anomalously this memoir of a nightmarish youth is both compulsively entertaining and tremendously provocative.
Publishers Weekly
This memoir by Burroughs is certainly unique; among other adventures, he recounts how his mother's psychiatrist took her to a motel for therapy, while at home the kids chopped a hole in the roof to make the kitchen brighter. Not all craziness, though, this account reveals the feelings of sadness and dislocation this unusual upbringing brought upon Burroughs and his friends. His early family life was characterized by his parents' break-and-destroy fights, and after his parents separated, his mother practically abandoned Burroughs in hopes of achieving fame as a poet. At 12, he went to live with the family (and a few patients) of his mother's psychiatrist. At the doctor's home, children did as they wished: they skipped school, ate whatever they wanted, engaged in whatever sexual adventures came along, and trashed the house and everything in it, while the mother watched TV and occasionally dusted. Burroughs has written an entertaining yet horrifying account that isn't for the squeamish: the scatological content and explicit homosexual episodes may limit its appeal. Recommended for the adventurous seeking an unsettling experience among the grotesque. —Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Library Journal
Autobiography of adolescent trauma depicting the author's quest for survival in an unorthodox family alongside his quest for fabulous hair. Copywriter turned novelist Burroughs (Sellevision, 2000) captures in his memoir a particular cultural moment in the late 1970s and early '80s when the baby boomers' flaccid if-it-feels-good-do-it ethos soured. "My parents loathed each other and the life they had built together," he writes. The estrangement of his increasingly manic-depressive poet mother and cold, alcoholic father flung young Burroughs into the strange Northampton, Massachusetts, household of family psychiatrist Dr. Finch, a jolly and permissive yet ominous figure who advocated intense therapy and nonjudgmental fathering. At his mother's insistence, Burroughs spent much of his adolescence living among the Finches. The fussy, hairdressing-obsessed boy was unnerved by their squalid household but became close with irascible daughters Hope and Natalie, participating in their substance abuse and delinquency, helping them wreck the Finches' dilapidated Victorian house. The doctor's pseudo-parenting encouraged the boy's sexual relationship with creepy, manipulative, much older Neil Bookman, Finch's "adopted son." When the doctor coached Burroughs to stage a suicide attempt in order to get out of going to school, our hero began to wonder whether life with the Finches would equip him, or Hope, or Natalie with mainstream survival skills-eventually, surprisingly enough, it did. Burroughs strongly delineates the tangled, perverse bonds among these high-watt eccentrics and his childhood self, aspiring to a grotesque comic merger of John Waters and David Sedaris. However, his under-edited prose is frequently uninspired and rambling, relying on consumer-culture references (from Clairol, Pat Benatar, Brooke Shields, Captain and Tennille, Sea Monkeys, the Brady Bunch, to Magic Eight Balls, etc., etc.) and repetitive sequences of abrasive dialogue ("Stop antagonizing me.... Just stop transferring all this anger onto me"). Presumably he garnered these details from his oft-mentioned journal, but they fail to deepen the characters. An unusual upbringing, reconstituted into a very usual memoir.
Kirkus Review
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Running with Scissors:
1. Discuss your initial impression of Dr. Finch’s practices. How do they change throughout the book? Do you think he’s unconventional or is he dangerous?
2. Many critics have classified this book as a comedy. Do you agree?
3. Rather than transferring guardianship of Augusten to Dr. Finch, what should Deirdre have done instead? Did she have any other options at that time?
4. Which member of the Finch clan did you sympathize with the most? Which did you dislike the most?
5. Natalie and Augusten were the closest people in each others lives. What made them so compatible? They were thought to be so close yet a single event tore them apart completely. Was their relationship real or a means of survival?
6. Which of Dr. Finch’s “methods” did you find most bizarre?
7. There is a revaluation towards the end of the book. Did it surprise you or was it expected?
8. After the initial release of Running with Scissors, the family sued Burroughs claiming it contained fabricated material. Consequently, the book had to be classified as a novel rather than a memoir. Still, Burroughs isists that all of the stories are true. Because of the outrageous nature of some stories, do you think that some details were exaggerated to put the author in a more complimentary light?
(Questions by Katherine O'Connor of LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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