- Email: [email protected]
True to memory?
Perspectives
If you’re a fan, you’ll know many of the older poems (presented in chronological order from the first book, The Smell of Matches, 1972, to the most recent, Where Water Begins, 1998). If you’re unfamiliar with Stone’s work, these poems will introduce you to his voice organically, demonstrating how his years in medicine have informed his writing. A short list of my favourites here includes Love Poem for a Son, Talking to the Family, Getting to Sleep in New Jersey, The Girl in the Hall, Lessons in the Subjunctive, Transplant, and, of course, Gaudeamus Igitur: A
Valediction. It is impossible to read this intelligent, accomplished poem without giving thanks for those who can imbue words with such singing, such praise, such grief, such redemption. In The Country of Hearts, Stone wrote about a cancer surgeon who held fast to the idea that “there is almost never someone that you can’t help in some way”. Those words, Stone said, seemed to be the “credo of a mature clinician, whatever his specialty: appropriately aggressive, realistic, compassionate”. The same is true of Stone’s approach to poetry. He is pre-
cise and confident in his craft; his work springs from real life, sometimes domestic, often clinical; and he is, above all, a compassionate witness. This newest collection is perhaps the best example of Stone’s poetic gift and his generous, praising heart.
Cortney Davis [email protected] Cortney Davis’ latest poetry collection, Leopold’s Maneuvers (University of Nebraska Press, 2004) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. She is coeditor of Between the Heartbeats and Intensive Care, and author of a memoir about her work as a nurse practitioner, I Knew a Woman.
In brief Book Crossing borders
Hope in Hell: Inside the World of Médecins Sans Frontières Dan Bortolotti. Firefly Books, late September, 2004. Pp 304. $29·95. ISBN 1-55297-865-6.
The Memory Artists Jeffrey Moore. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004. Pp 336. £16·99. ISBN 0-297-60798-7.
834
Anyone interested in the realities of public-service medicine should read Dan Bortolotti’s portrait of the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF—also known as Doctors without Borders). Woven through his comprehensive picture of the essence of volunteerism are the details of how MSF evolved from humble beginnings in a Paris boardroom to become a Nobelprize winning organisation with more than 3000 volunteers in hundreds of projects worldwide. The evolutionary process was not easy. An internal rift developed over whether humanitarian organisations had a duty to speak out against the conditions they witnessed or remain politically neutral. This battle caused such a profound division that the visionary physician behind MSF’s inception was ousted from its leadership. But this isn’t just a history of the organisation. By following individual volunteers, Bortolotti describes the realities of MSF service: from the risks of working in dangerous places to the truth behind patients’ care, to the difficulties in reassimilation back home at the end of a mission. According to Bortolotti, MSF physicians do not all fit the same mould; some make MSF a
lifestyle, others participate for a few weeks a year. And while MSF physicians may be viewed as selfless, there is in fact “something in it” for them. A mission can be exciting, pushing doctors to their limits, forcing them to do their best in challenging conditions. But some volunteers are surprised to find how limited is the care they provide. Many feel they were able to help only a few, not the hundreds they imagined. But, as Bortolotti notes, all who participate do make a difference.
Amanda Walters Scarbrough [email protected]
Book True to memory?
relinquishing its contents to Alzheimer’s disease. The Memory Artists goes further than a simple chronicle of this relationship. Jeffrey Moore uses Noel’s genius and synaesthesia to offer beautiful descriptions of other luridly coloured (and memory dysfunctional) characters, as well as his experience of his mother’s disease to portray the agony of watching a loved one’s inevitable decline. He also finds time to delve into the sometimes murky world of medical research and comment on the role of medicine as an interface between science and art. In fact, there are so many facets to this story that the pace slows in the mid-section, a tangle of circumstances and intrigues that perhaps mirror the confused world of both the mother with Alzheimer’s disease and her son. Excerpts from classical prose and poetry, interspersed with pieces of clinical history and colourful description, at once painfully laboured in detail and at the same time wonderfully intense. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if it is fact or fiction; it is certainly memorable.
It is not often that I truly cannot decide whether a tale is fact or fiction. But this appeared to be the case for The Memory Artists; was real life or an author’s imagination responsible for the merciless coincidence of the hero’s situation? The book centres on a young man (Noel) suffering from two rare neurological conditions: hypermnesia and synaesthesia. Noel lives in a world where sounds become complex patterns of colour and shape, his brain able to code everything he reads and hears. He forgets nothing. Meanwhile, the mind of his Lindsay Banham beautiful widowed mother is slowly [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 364 September 4, 2004
If you’re a fan, you’ll know many of the older poems (presented in chronological order from the first book, The Smell of Matches, 1972, to the most recent, Where Water Begins, 1998). If you’re unfamiliar with Stone’s work, these poems will introduce you to his voice organically, demonstrating how his years in medicine have informed his writing. A short list of my favourites here includes Love Poem for a Son, Talking to the Family, Getting to Sleep in New Jersey, The Girl in the Hall, Lessons in the Subjunctive, Transplant, and, of course, Gaudeamus Igitur: A
Valediction. It is impossible to read this intelligent, accomplished poem without giving thanks for those who can imbue words with such singing, such praise, such grief, such redemption. In The Country of Hearts, Stone wrote about a cancer surgeon who held fast to the idea that “there is almost never someone that you can’t help in some way”. Those words, Stone said, seemed to be the “credo of a mature clinician, whatever his specialty: appropriately aggressive, realistic, compassionate”. The same is true of Stone’s approach to poetry. He is pre-
cise and confident in his craft; his work springs from real life, sometimes domestic, often clinical; and he is, above all, a compassionate witness. This newest collection is perhaps the best example of Stone’s poetic gift and his generous, praising heart.
Cortney Davis [email protected] Cortney Davis’ latest poetry collection, Leopold’s Maneuvers (University of Nebraska Press, 2004) won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. She is coeditor of Between the Heartbeats and Intensive Care, and author of a memoir about her work as a nurse practitioner, I Knew a Woman.
In brief Book Crossing borders
Hope in Hell: Inside the World of Médecins Sans Frontières Dan Bortolotti. Firefly Books, late September, 2004. Pp 304. $29·95. ISBN 1-55297-865-6.
The Memory Artists Jeffrey Moore. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004. Pp 336. £16·99. ISBN 0-297-60798-7.
834
Anyone interested in the realities of public-service medicine should read Dan Bortolotti’s portrait of the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF—also known as Doctors without Borders). Woven through his comprehensive picture of the essence of volunteerism are the details of how MSF evolved from humble beginnings in a Paris boardroom to become a Nobelprize winning organisation with more than 3000 volunteers in hundreds of projects worldwide. The evolutionary process was not easy. An internal rift developed over whether humanitarian organisations had a duty to speak out against the conditions they witnessed or remain politically neutral. This battle caused such a profound division that the visionary physician behind MSF’s inception was ousted from its leadership. But this isn’t just a history of the organisation. By following individual volunteers, Bortolotti describes the realities of MSF service: from the risks of working in dangerous places to the truth behind patients’ care, to the difficulties in reassimilation back home at the end of a mission. According to Bortolotti, MSF physicians do not all fit the same mould; some make MSF a
lifestyle, others participate for a few weeks a year. And while MSF physicians may be viewed as selfless, there is in fact “something in it” for them. A mission can be exciting, pushing doctors to their limits, forcing them to do their best in challenging conditions. But some volunteers are surprised to find how limited is the care they provide. Many feel they were able to help only a few, not the hundreds they imagined. But, as Bortolotti notes, all who participate do make a difference.
Amanda Walters Scarbrough [email protected]
Book True to memory?
relinquishing its contents to Alzheimer’s disease. The Memory Artists goes further than a simple chronicle of this relationship. Jeffrey Moore uses Noel’s genius and synaesthesia to offer beautiful descriptions of other luridly coloured (and memory dysfunctional) characters, as well as his experience of his mother’s disease to portray the agony of watching a loved one’s inevitable decline. He also finds time to delve into the sometimes murky world of medical research and comment on the role of medicine as an interface between science and art. In fact, there are so many facets to this story that the pace slows in the mid-section, a tangle of circumstances and intrigues that perhaps mirror the confused world of both the mother with Alzheimer’s disease and her son. Excerpts from classical prose and poetry, interspersed with pieces of clinical history and colourful description, at once painfully laboured in detail and at the same time wonderfully intense. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if it is fact or fiction; it is certainly memorable.
It is not often that I truly cannot decide whether a tale is fact or fiction. But this appeared to be the case for The Memory Artists; was real life or an author’s imagination responsible for the merciless coincidence of the hero’s situation? The book centres on a young man (Noel) suffering from two rare neurological conditions: hypermnesia and synaesthesia. Noel lives in a world where sounds become complex patterns of colour and shape, his brain able to code everything he reads and hears. He forgets nothing. Meanwhile, the mind of his Lindsay Banham beautiful widowed mother is slowly [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 364 September 4, 2004