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Synopsis
Richard Selzer selects from his own classic essays, culled from three decades of writing. Published along with his favorites are five new essays, including "Phantom Vision" and "Braindeath," and an introduction detailing the making of this virtuoso doctor/writer. Compassionate, moving and perversely funny, Richard Selzer's essays intimately connect us with profound questions of life and death.
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Review
Over three decades, Richard Selzer has brought his skills as a surgeon to the page, wrestling powerful descriptions of pain and deliverance into words. This collection gathers representative writings from the whole of his career, including set pieces like the four-part "Letter to a Young Surgeon" and frequently anthologized essays on such delicate matters as delivering the news of a death to loved ones (and what happens to the corpse afterward).
Death is a constant theme in these essays, for "only in literature do the dead have a voice." Selzer has a marked talent for removing some of the mystery and fear from what is, after all, an inevitable process. He is also superb at describing such routine events of the surgical theater as the scrubbing of hands, the proper and improper functioning of blood and organs, and the instantaneous decisions that a doctor must make during a normal day. Selzer's style is often ornate--"What heartbroken psoriatic, surveying his embattled skin," he writes, "would not volunteer for an unanesthetized flaying could it but rid him of his pink sequins, his silver spangles?"--and not to every taste, but his gentle reflections on human frailty afford a revealing view of the practice of medicine, which Selzer clearly loves. "Say what you will about writing," he notes, "there is no more thrilling an achievement than the successful completion of a difficult surgical dissection." --Gregory McNamee
About the Author
Richard Selzer is a former surgeon and Yale School of Medicine professor. He has received many awards for his writing, including a National Magazine Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
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- PublisherPicador
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0312261462
- ISBN 13 9780312261467
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages400
- Rating
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