One Hundred Autobiographies, by David Lehman

There are many personal stories of cancer. Many self-help stories and many memoirs. And yes, there are even cancer poems.

But now we have a book that is both a cancer story and a work of literature that happens to be a memoir by a poet. We would not wish cancer on anyone, not even—as we say—our worst enemy, but now some gratitude because cancer has given us a gift in the new book:

“One Hundred Autobiographies” by poet and scholar, David Lehman.

It is true that for a writer everything is material, and that for a writer everything is examined through the lens of language, so of course from his first suspicions Lehman began to craft a story—the real and awful story --of his bladder cancer.

The “One Hundred Autobiographies” is one hundred short vignettes detailing and documenting diagnosis, treatment and into the start of recovery. 

While we, here is CancerLand,  may know some things about cancer, and some things about bladder cancer, Lehman takes us to new places only a poet can take us.

He brings popular culture into the rooms, (look there--Keith Richards and Patti Hanson--who knew?) and he also allows intellectual folk like Edward Said and Lionel Trilling to join in. 

But how else would a poet and scholar do cancer?

Lehman shows us his pain and fear, and he shows us his love, and his loving wife, Stacey who documents what Lehman cannot see or sense when he is under the spell of anesthesia and the recovery room.

But here’s the thing about this cancer book: You are also going to laugh when you least expect it, and you are going to scribble in the margins (hence, buy your own copy) all the quotes you want to save and the books you’ll want to put on your library list (“The End of the Affair” by Graham Greene was first on mine.)

Lehman’s book is smart and sharp, with a touch of literary celebrity, and beautiful language. And something else: You don’t even have to have cancer to be enthralled by this book.


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David Lehman is the author of: Poems in the Manner of...and Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World. Lehman is the editor of The Oxford Book of American  Poetry and series editor of The Best American Poetry. He teaches in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City.

So this is Nina Riggs--poet, writer, Mom, wife, friend, dog lover, cancer patient. And gone.

Left for the rest of us is her new and amazing memoir, "The Bright Hour--A Memoir of Living and Dying". This fine and beautiful book is about living with--and dying from--cancer.

Nina Riggs was a poet, and that facility with language and images, and her ability to see through the world ensures power on every single page.

Riggs writes with great humor--much needed here in CancerLand, and her book is about living with cancer--raising kids, adopting a dog, being in a marriage even while getting ready to die.

With this book Riggs raises the bar on how to die, and how to see the world every single day that you are alive. This will be the most uplifting book you read this year.

Malignant Metaphor by Alanna Mitchell

In CancerLand we talk a lot about fear. And the fear of pain, nausea, chemo, surgery, exhaustion and the one million accompanying losses which are legitimate to a cancer diagnosis or to being a cancer caregiver.

But there is another kind of cancer fear that is widely felt though less spoken about. Alanna Mitchell names that fear and dissects it powerfully in her new book, Malignant Metaphor,

published this week by ECW Press in Toronto.

The subtitle of her book is, “confronting cancer myths”. And there are many. Mitchell was compelled to write about this after two family members had serious cancer diagnoses. She learned, as most readers here know, about the confusion and inconsistency and the struggle to get straight answers. But Mitchell also took on the surrounding trauma and stigma.

Malignant Metaphor covers the implied blame that accrues to cancer patients. The sense that cancer happens because someone didn’t do something right: you didn’t eat right, exercise right, express emotions right. She calls cancer myology an “irreconcilable trifecta of blame and anxiety.” 

She looks at the cultural beliefs that are now mostly unconscious but which, nevertheless, control and shape our thinking: “For as long as humans have written words, we have portrayed disease as an indictment of character, proof of a secret sin, or as punishment by an unseen but powerful force.”

This is a book for cancer caregivers and family, and especially for professional caregivers and students. Examining these myths and deep beliefs will help all of us to change the system of care in CancerLand.

What's the Upside to the Trauma of Cancer

The odds are pretty good that if you have been hanging out in CancerLand you have experienced some trauma. It might be your diagnosis or the reality of your treatment or how the “not too bad” side effects turned out to be horrendous. OR, if you are the caregiver, the trauma is again that day of diagnosis and then the shock of exhaustion and the pain of having your body flooded with adrenaline for months on end. Plenty of trauma and yes, therefore plenty of post-traumatic stress.

But now there is some really good news about trauma and cancer. It turns out that there is also something called Post-Traumatic Growth, which also accrues to patients and caregivers in CancerLand.

I’m learning about this in the new book called “Upside—The New Science of Post-Traumatic

Growth” written by Jim Rendon, a veteran journalist.

Rendon spent years interviewing social scientists, physicians and survivors of trauma—all kinds of trauma and much of it medical and cancer trauma-- and his book show us that it is truly possible to thrive and not just survive trauma. That business about “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” turns out to be true. But it’s even a little better than that because God knows we are strong but in “Upside” Rendon shows that we get a joy and happiness boost as well.

This book is hope in hardcover for so many of us, and it is validation as well, that being happy after the trauma of cancer is not a sign of denial.

This is going to be an important book for therapists and coaches and counselors and especially for folks in oncology and cancer care. We can now back up our promises with science and research, when we say that no matter what happened, you can be happy, joyous and free.

The Literature of Caregiving: Cancer Vixen

Graphic novels—also called “comics” --have become so popular with readers of all ages that many bookstores have stopped segregating them on a single shelf and now integrate them with traditional books and related categories: fiction, nonfiction, parenting, health, memoir. 

This year Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home was adapted for Broadway and became the Tony award-winning Best Musical of 2015. So it makes sense that graphic novels and graphic memoir are having a moment. So we can find them in the Literature of Caregiving and The Literature of Cancer genre.

One of the graphic/comic cancer books that I especially love is Marisa Acocella’s Cancer Vixen. Acocella had long been a cartoonist for The New Yorker, Glamour and Modern Bride magazines when she took a flying leap and wrote a book about her experience with breast cancer. 

Diagnosed just a few months before her wedding, Acocella provides a powerful visual story about getting the news, her changing relationship with her fiancé/husband, and the trials of treatment and the terror of being uninsured. 

Acocella also includes her dilemmas dealing with shoes, clothes, lipstick, girl friends, shopping and tribulations at her job, making it one of the funniest and most honest cancer stories. It is a mad combination of Girly-Girl advice and fierce advocacy.

Another graphic (in every sense) book about cancer is “Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person” by Miriam Engelberg. Engelberg was a cartoonist living in San Francisco and her book is a memoir created by a series of comics that take us through her cancer journey—first diagnosis, treatments, family, workplace, second diagnosis, more treatments and her internal reactions.

A couple of things set this work apart from Cancer Vixen: unlike Marissa Acocella, Engelberg was not a trained cartoonist, but her outsider-naïve style lends an air of vulnerability and immediacy to the work. Unlike Cancer Vixen, Engelberg’s book does not have a happy ending. She died a few months after the book was published.

Both of these books are funny and inspiring. At the center of each story is a view of the ways that many of us react to difficult things. For Acocella and Engelberg it’s cancer, for you or a friend it could be divorce, aging, trouble with kids etc.Yes, there is humor in these stories, as well as pain and hope and honesty.

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The Literature of Caregiving is a monthly series here at Love in the Time Of Cancer. 

Before I Go

The plot for this book seems clever: A young woman is diagnosed with a terminal cancer and has just a few months to live. Before she dies she wants to find a new wife for her husband so that he will be happy and cared for after she dies.

That seems the conceit for a chick flick, right? You can imagine: feisty heroine, selfless love, and the requisite funny, sidekick best friend who is in on the plot. It’s all silly but sad matchmaking, and even a “Terms of Endearment” sad Mom as well.

And in Colleen Oakley’s first novel, “Before I Go”, all of those elements are present. You

might even assume, as I did, that this would be a relatively light-hearted (it’s always relative with cancer and death) book. And it does start out that way.

But then, the writing takes off as the story gets tougher and our happy (dying but sassy) heroine begins to show us the realities of knowing that you are really, really dying.

A scene that I loved: She is telling us about the romance novels that she watched her mother read when she is growing up and how she just assumed that as she got older and her hair got gray that she’d read romance novels too. But then it hits her, “But my hair won’t gray. And my skin won’t wrinkle and I may die without having ever read a romance novel….and this, this! is what makes me start to cry. And it occurs to me that if I were to write a “Coping with Terminal Cancer” pamphlet, this is what I would cover. Not the obvious stuff about anger and bargaining but crying over bodice rippers in a suburban mall at 10am on a Monday morning.”

And the search for her husband’s next wife? Oakley takes us from a silly conceit to the depth of mixed feelings for both partners when a spouse is dying of cancer.

I definitely recommend, “Before I Go.”

You Can Say No to Chemo

No, you probably don’t want to take this book to the oncology center to read in your vinyl Barcalounger, and it’s probably going to be inflammatory to show it to your oncologist when you have your one-on-one meeting. But it is not a bad idea to read or at least skim this book if you have any interest in alternatives or treatment options.

Laura Bond is a certified health coach—so she’s not a doctor, but the folks she interviewed are. And she did an amazing amount of research—and really dug into studies on the effects and the effectiveness of chemo and radiation. And, you already know this, both of those treatments cause cancer as well as cure cancer. The strategy with most chemo recipes is to kill the bad guys faster than the good guys and hope the good guys don’t turn bad. We do a lot of things with that kind of gamble so lets not totally bash chemo and radiation.

But—wouldn’t you like to know about the other options—the ones your oncologist is not going to mention and the ones Big Pharma is not going to support? Yes, you do. 

Some of those alternatives are going to seem wackier than wacky, while others will have you going, “Huh, really—that kinda makes sense.” Heat as a cure? Yep, allowing a fever to rise as a remedy? We’ve done that for years. Some of the extreme diets that Bond reports on had me rolling my eyes, while—surprise to me—the one about shaking just strangely enough—made sense.

No one—including Laura Bond—is saying walk away from chemo and radiation—but she is saying: read, ponder, ask, think, ask again…and try some things. What she’s given us in this book is a batch of solid research and resources so you can select ones you want to look at further.

The resource section in the back of the book is very helpful—it will give you contacts and phone numbers and websites to make your research so much easier.

Busting Cancer Kid Stereotypes--Before the Movie

You have by now seen a coming attraction or an ad for the move, “The Fault in Our Stars.” It will be a top summer movie and likely in the category of chick-flick, or teen heartthrob blockbuster. But I urge you—before the movie arrives—to do the old-fashioned and very smart thing and read the novel first.

“The Fault in Our Stars” was written by John Green and technically (arbitrarily by publishers) it is categorized as a “YA” or Young Adult novel. Most likely it got that designation because the three lead characters are under 18. But I assure you this is a very adult story because it deals with the most important adult issues: Illness, healthcare, language, love and death.

I have a feeling that the movie version will be very good, and that the filmmakers have done their best to be true to this story but it’s a novel and a novel about language and ideas and feelings so there is a lot in the book that will not make it onto the screen. So for that reason, please read the book now, before everyone starts talking about how much the movie made him or her cry.

If you read the book you too will cry, I think, but you will, I am sure, also think—and think a lot.

No spoiler here: it’s a story about cancer. Here we are in Cancer Land after all. But this is a story about how we think about cancer and how we think about death and how we think about (and talk about) people who have cancer. They had me at “there is no battle”. And extra points for  discovering what the book title means.

Check it out today. Your local independent bookstore has it and so does your public library, and this is also a great book on CD if you like your literature in the car.

Here is more on the amazing John Green:
http://johngreenbooks.com/the-fault-in-our-stars/

Living in the Land of Limbo

Every year I teach a class called the Literature of Caregiving where we look at fiction and poetry and plays that touch on caregiving and cancer, and relationships that are changed by illness.

I’ve compiled a long list of books and it is fun to ask other readers what books –that are not self-help or advice—they like that have given then a picture of what it means to be a caregiver or what happens to a relationship when serious illness enters the story.

It has been said that there are only two stories: “A Stranger Comes to Town” or “A Man Goes on a Journey.” Think about it; think about your favorite movie or work of fiction. Then think about cancer: Yes, someone is going on a journey and yes, it’s also true that scary cancer has come to town.

Then consider Alzheimer’s: indeed a stranger comes to town. And for both cancer and Alzheimer’s and every other serious illness: the caregiver is going on a wild and hairy journey.

Now there is a new book that has collected stories of fiction that depict the difficulty of caring for a loved one with a serous illness.

This new anthology called “Living in the Land of Limbo.” The editor is Carol Levine, director of the United Hospital Fund’s Families and Healthcare Project. Levine has organized this anthology by type of relationship: children of aging parents, husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and friends and even paid caregivers. She includes wonderful stories from Raymond Carver, Rick Moody, Lorrie Moore among other great writers.

This is a book for you the caregiver, you the patient, you the friend and yes, you the healthcare provider. All shame and euphemism are removed. Here illness and caregiving are as real as they can be because, of course, that is what fiction allows.

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Land-Limbo-Fiction-Caregiving/dp/0826519709/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399149895&sr=1-1&keywords=living+in+limbo

Books and Books and Wonderful Books in CancerLand

In another post I have written about science writer George Johnson and his new book, "The Cancer Chronicles" where he --prompted by his wife's cancer--looks carefully at the science of cancer and its treatments. This week in the Wall Street Journal's  book column, Five Best, Johnson selects the five best books about illness.

He has chosen winners--Sontag, Solzhenitsyn, Mann and ones I had not thought of but now want to read--especially The Magic Mountain.

Here is the link to his article about the five best books about disease:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579024801874100772.html


PS...if you too thought The Wall Street Journal was only for business and finance types you are missing some of the best art, literature and cultural writing. I made that mistake too for too long. Now I cannot wait to get my Wall Street Journal on Saturdays.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579024801874100772.html

New Books About Cancer and Cancer Research

In today's Wall Street Journal there is a review by Laura Landro of two new books about cancer. Her review as well as the two books make good reading.

"The Truth in Small Doses" by Clifton Leaf--a former Fortune editor and survivor of Hodgkin's lymphoma, focuses on the limited progress made in the war on cancer. He challenges the "cancer-industrial-complex" and with his business analysis skills analyzes the overspending on drug research at the cost of early detection.

"The Cancer Chronicles" is by George Johnson--a science writer who has cared for his wife through her long and excruciating  aggressive gynecological cancer. He focuses, naturally, on the science of cancer, environment, trigger cells, molecular change and the body's biochemical responses.

It's interesting that both professionals chose to find their own way into the mysteries of cancer based on their professional expertise--business and scientific inquiry--after being touched most personally by the disease or sets of illnesses that cancer represents.

Here's the link to the story in today's Wall Street Journal. Take a look:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639704579012772893323140.html