In today's NY Sunday Times Book Review, there is a review of a new book by Joan Didion entitled "The Year of Magical Thinking" that explores the events associated with her daughter becoming gravely ill and her husband dying unexpectedly (her daughter would also die later, after the book was completed). The review can be read at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09pinsky.html?8bu=&emc=bu&pagewanted=all
I was struck by the following paragraphs from the review, partly because of what if implies about the sources of information and guidance we might rely upon in dealing with a loved one's death, our grief over it, and the sometimes ugly necessity of having to having to remain engaged in everyday life during bereavement: ************************************ She is less patient with a psychiatric paper that says blandly, "Using our understanding of the psychodynamics involved in the patient's need to keep the lost one alive, we can then explain and interpret the relationship that had existed between the patient and the one who died." Didion makes this language, so complacently unaware of its own inadequacy, the more absurd by making her own loathing for it absurd. For one text she expresses unqualified admiration. Didion quotes an extended passage remarkably superior, in form and content, to the medical "we can explain and interpret" sentence just quoted. She justly respects this for its cogency and insight: "Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they seemingly may be, no one can under such circumstances be normal. Their disturbed circulation makes them cold, their distress makes them unstrung, sleepless." The author is the etiquette master Emily Post, writing in her 1922 handbook of manners a chapter entitled "Funerals." Didion clearly enjoys giving credit to Post over the clumsy psychiatric book and the shallow poetry teacher, but her point about inner life and outer expectations is important. The old-fashioned writer on manners has advice about where to sit at the funeral, and about what sort of food to offer the bereaved. She makes observations about the physiology of grief - which is to say, about the body, that boundary area between the mountainous regions of grief inside and the busy, preoccupied world of society outside. Emily Post undertakes the acknowledgment and incorporation of grief as part of the ordinary world - not as the special work of experts like the social worker at Beth Israel North, ready to relieve the doctors and stand in for that old set of customs and practicalities. Didion says of Post's chapter, "It spoke to me directly." She says of the physical cold she felt on that first night of grief: "Mrs. Post would have understood that. She wrote in a world in which mourning was still recognized, allowed." ********************************************* I am curious about the reactions to Didion's book by people who have taught courses on death and dying and wonder how it relates to other material in this area. I realize that because it is a new book it may be while before people read it (I haven't but the review has motivated me to put near the top of my own reading list) but I thought I would raise the point now while it is still fresh in mind. -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
