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Non-Nonfiction
For the past two weeks now, I have been mulling over my pledge for this entry to discuss three recent major novels that I liked (and in the case of two, loved), but which also illustrate the narrative laziness that seems to characterize a lot of contemporary fiction. In case you’ve been racked with curiosity, they are...
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Doctor Stories
Incredulity, boredom, a patronizing “isn’t that nice”: these are a few of the responses I receive when folks in or out of the medical profession learn I write in my copious spare time. Atul Gawande, Sherwin Nuland, Oliver Sacks, and Abraham Verghese aside, it strikes many people odd that a doctor would do something so–how to put it?–unproductive.
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The Prodigal Daughter
The definition of a good memoir, like St. Paul’s famous definition of love, is perhaps better fleshed out in considering what it does not do than what it does. A good memoir, for example, does not ignore the harsh truths of the past, but neither does it delight in placing blame; it does not enlarge the sins of others, nor does it downplay the memoirist’s own shortcomings. Rather, a memoir rings true when it devotes as much time to investigating the self as it does to interrogating the past.
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Braving the Field
I picked up Choice, an anthology of women’s stories of infertility, adoption, and abortion, while roaming a bookstore on Christmas Eve. Ever since a college course in reproductive ethics led me to convert from my family’s pro-choice stance to a politically bewildered pro-life position, I’ve been addicted to personal narratives of abortion decisions. Call me morbid, call me a conflicted seeker; whether recounted in a slick documentary or on an abandoned blog, but I find the stories of women and men who have faced this decision to be far more compelling than anything spouted by the talking heads.
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The Book of Buechner
Writing down the life story of an esteemed and holy man is no easy task. Just ask Reginald, the eager and at times fawning biographer who documents the life of an uncooperative hermit in Frederick Buechner’s ninth novel, Godric. Or ask Dale Brown, who—though his subject is much more willing than Reginald’s—just might have something in common with that enthusiastic biographer-of-a-near-saint.
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Current Issue
Issue 72
Memoir by Lauren Winner, Poetry by James Harpur, Art by Guy Chase and Adrian Wiszniewski
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