Illness

Narrativizing everyday experiences of the pandemic in New York City.

Making chronic illness visible.

Talking back to diagnosis

“The perceived aversion to a male-centered illness narrative had to do with antiquated ideas about who should and shouldn’t be vulnerable to a failing body, and what that vulnerability means.”

“I don’t think about the audience. If I thought about the audience, I’d be writing Rent.”—Cynthia Hopkins

John Wray’s novel Lowboy has been out for a few weeks now, and the media attention has been universally enthusiastic.

Cinema didn’t start with stories. It was hijacked by them. The journey from Lumière to Griffith was over before it began.

This First Proof contains the story “A Lepidopterist’s Tale.”

He has seen these cliffs before, in picture books. He has seen the wide beaches and the ruined cathedral. 

There does indeed exist a strange kind of brain damage. I have a friend who is a housewife in her thirties. When she talks with others, her left eye will not stop blinking.

Always they ask of him: When did you begin? 

I continued to function, morning surgery, rounds after lunch, evening surgery, on-call at night. It was a cold winter, and Spike was vicious.

In the spring of 1957, some cronies and I had a supper club in the dining room of the Green Lantern, an inn on the edge of Hanover, New Hampshire, where I was a student in my senior year at Dartmouth. 

There I am, we are.

He had been waiting in the doctor’s office for so long he had begun to forget his symptoms.