A Stroke of Genius: Illness and Self-Discovery - Hardcover

West, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670849561 ISBN 13: 9780670849567

Publisher: Viking, 1995

Synopsis

The critically acclaimed author of Love's Mansion utilizes the symptoms of the illnesses from which he suffers to embark on an imaginative quest for self-exploration, reflecting on such topics as existentialism, doctors, etymology, coffee, air travel, and more. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

From Library Journal:

Erudite, breathless novelist West (author of more than 20 books, including Love's Mansion, LJ 9/1/92) here directs his overdriven mind and expansive imagination inward to a consideration of the series of illnesses that have plagued him in recent years-migraines, a stroke, heart disease, diabetes-and the psychological implications of being sick. The result is a monolog worthy of his most masterful fictional narrators, at once funny, gross, poignant, and scalpel-like in its precision. (West's commentary on the insensitivity of physicians will ring bells with anyone who has ever been a patient.) This is finally an odd and oddly intimate book in that the scope is (appropriately, of course) so self-centered. Excellent for collections in the health and social sciences and for the sort of literate readers who enjoy West's fiction; those interested in the literature of migraine headaches will also find this book interesting for its vivid descriptions. [For another novelist's account of his own illness, see Reynold Price's A Whole New Life, LJ 3/1/94.-Ed.]-Mark L. Shelton, Worcester, Mass.
--Mark L. Shelton, Worcester, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

This memoir of prize-winning novelist West's (Love's Mansion) bouts with stroke, heart disease, diabetes and migraines is lushly metaphorical, mordant and ultimately moving. The sardonic pun of the title reflects the author's ambivalence: he never fully recovers from the assaults of illness, but his abrupt initiation into the processes that keep the body in motion fascinates him: "In death's anteroom," he writes, "I was becoming... a stranger to myself, whom I got to know and sometimes to like." West delights in the ornate etymologies of medical terminology; his pacemaker is "the toy that tweaks me"; and the dazzling shows of light that accompany his migraines are "the silent movie of your brain eyeing itself." Though he lashes out at the arrogance of medical professionals and their "despotic indifference" to the patient's peace of mind, he offers here largely a survivor's celebration of the durability of his body and soul.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0670849561
• ISBN 13: 9780670849567
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192