Sometimes when I am really supposed to be doing something else I end up reading newspaper articles that catch my eye. Today I read “A healthy dose of sick lit” on the Guardian Unlimited Books blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/sep…). Like the author of the blog, I also generally avoid books about “bodily decay and death”, but I also find myself being drawn to the topic through having been ill myself and being currently in that “everything crossed” state. I find that now I do often read other accounts of the journey through cancer treatment though for the same reason as the author gives – distance – not as yet a whole book.
Kalder does “succumb” to reading a book about the experience of having a brain tumour though, and says this of it:
“When Karinthy articulates what is happening to him, he reaches for Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, and sundry Hungarians you’ve never heard of. He sees and explains himself via literature, instead of the modern babble of confessional self-analysis“
That’s the nub of it: Literature, theory, other writing is that place of mediation through which one can reflect upon one’s own experience and make others’ stories one’s own, as well as recognise one’s own story as not singular but a part of collective human experience.
