Summary:

The Physician in Literature is an anthology edited and introduced by Norman Cousins that aims to illustrate the multiple ways in which doctors are portrayed in world literature. Literary selections are organized into 12 categories including Research and Serendipity, The Role of the Physician, Gods and Demons, Quacks and Clowns, Clinical Descriptions in Literature, Doctors and Students, The Practice, Women and Healing, Madness, Dying, The Patient, and An Enduring Tradition.

Some of the notable authors represented in this collection include Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Albert Camus, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Anton P. Chekhov, Orwell, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Gustave Flaubert, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A healthy dose of William Carlos Williams makes for some of the most enjoyable reading ("The Use of Force" and excerpts from his Autobiography).

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In this collection, twenty-two authors take up the subject of wanting a baby and what happens to one's self-image and marriage/relationship when difficulties arise. All the contributors are accomplished writers--e.g. Amy Hempel, Michael Bérubé, Tama Janowitz--who tell stories of the miracles, disapppointments and sometimes horrors of the various reproductive technologies; the experience of childlessness when one/a couple desperately wants one; the joys of "success" via technology or adoption; what happens when every method fails.

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Sir Luke Fildes's eldest son Phillip died Christmas morning, 1877. He was attended by Dr. Murray, who directed all of his attention and care to the patient during the child's fatal illness. This unswerving dedication impressed Fildes.

Ten years later, when Sir Henry Tate commissioned Fildes for a painting to exhibit in what was to become the Tate Gallery, Fildes was given freedom to choose the subject matter. Fildes immediately decided to depict this scene of a family physician holding a bedside vigil by a seriously ill child. However, the painting was not begun for four years, and then only at the urging of Tate.

The shade of a lamp is tilted so as to bestow light on the two central figures: the physician, and especially, the recumbent child. The physician faces away from the bottled medicine and cup on the table and directs his gaze fully on the child. He is dressed neatly and sits calmly, patiently, resting his bearded chin on his hand.

The small child is central in the picture, in a white nightshirt on a large white pillow and covered with pale blankets. The makeshift bed consists of two unmatched dining room-type chairs. The child's hair is tousled and the left arm flung out, with hand supinated and beyond the edge of the pillow. Nonetheless, the child rests quite peacefully, as the pose appears quite natural.

To the right and rear of the painting are the parents. They are placed in such deep shadows that it is frequently difficult to make out these figures in reproductions. The mother sits at a table and hides her face in her clasped hands. The father stands beside her, with a comforting hand on her shoulder, as he gazes at the physician.

The painting is set in the interior of a small cottage. Rafters are low, furniture simple. Colors are muted; earth tones predominate. Although the majority of the light comes from the lamp, a bit of light also enters from the recessed window near the mother.

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The narrator stands working at her ironing board, responding mentally to a request someone (a teacher? a social worker?) makes of her regarding her daughter Emily, "I wish you could manage the time to come in and talk with me . . . She's a youngster who needs help." The woman's thoughts go back to Emily's birth during the Depression when she was only 19, and her thoughts range forward, haltingly, in piecemeal fashion, through her daughter's difficult childhood.

Due to the wages of loss, poverty and dislocation, a wall has grown up between mother and daughter--she has always wanted to love the sickly, awkward, stiff, and isolated girl, but has not been able to penetrate the wall. And then, she recalls, out of nowhere Emily won first prize in her school amateur show. The girl is a natural performer, a wonderful comedienne, who now is in demand throughout the city and state.

Suddenly, Emily appears on the scene. "Aren't you ever going to finish the ironing, mother?" She says that she wants to sleep in the morning, even though this will make her late for mid-term exams. Near the end of the story the narrator imagines telling her interlocutor, "Why were you so concerned? She will find her way." But then she implores, "Only help her to know--help make it so there is cause for her to know--that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron."

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Malcolm Vaughan, an architect, his wife, Sarah, a biochemist, and their five-year-old son, Harry, are driving home one evening. The driver of the car in front of them is acting strangely. Malcolm goes to investigate and the driver shoots him dead. The novel traces the effects of Malcolm's death from the alternating points of view of his wife and his best friend, Deckard Jones, a black Vietnam vet. Following different and often conflicting trajectories but linked by their love for Harry, both Sarah and Deck begin to move from traumatized shock to the beginnings of recovery.

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This is a cluster of seven short poems focusing on the response of husband to the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis for the future of his beloved wife who has breast cancer. For example, "The Cloud" speaks of the passage of the uncertain weeks and years: "And into this idyllic time breast cancer crept. . . Wonder if it’s coming back. It’s life writ small / You don’t know what’s around that curve. . . ."

"For Rosemarie" is a plea for strength, while "Mommy’s Getting Chemo" contemplates the stance of the couple’s very young son. "Lymphedema Hand" is a loving tribute to the power and competence of the altered body of the woman. In all, the collection is forthright, painfully frank, while sustained by the gentle love that propels it.

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Eva McEwen is born in Scotland in 1920. Her mother dies shortly after giving birth to her. At the age of six, Eva is "visited" by two strangers (an older woman and a teenage girl) that only she can see and hear. These mysterious companions steer the course of her life. During World War II, Eva serves as a nurse in a burn unit.

She falls in love with a plastic surgeon but her supernatural attendants have other plans for Eva. She secures a job as a school nurse, marries a teacher, and has a daughter. Sadly, Eva dies at a young age from cancer of the liver and pancreas. Thus the novel ends much like it began, with the tragic death of a young mother who leaves behind a devoted husband and daughter while ghostly visitors are poised to both share and meddle in the youngster's life.

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This varied collection of short stories and poems is unified not so much by theme as by their appropriateness to the intended listening audience--the bedridden or homebound elderly. In a brief but moving preface editor Carolyn Banks recalls her work in an adult day care center where she was expected to entertain those who were recovering from strokes or suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Reading aloud provided sometimes startling moments of contact with patients who were incapable of sustained conversation. Banks realized that while there are many story collections for children and general adult audiences, no one had done a collection for a group with these specific needs.

The collection includes 52 stories--one a week for a year--that cover a range of life situations. Not all focus on age or illness, though some do. In several a grandparent plays a crucial role in a grandchild's life. Some are set in the 1930's, 40's and 50's--periods likely to trigger memories for those now in their 70's and 80's.

Several stories focus on situations of widowhood and other losses, and some on death: Banks insists that death "is not a taboo topic." Many of the stories are comic, since, she comments, laughter is "an important response to court." All are short enough to read in a half hour or less, and "not insultingly simple."

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The Exact Location of the Soul is a collection of 26 essays along with an introduction titled "The Making of a Doctor/Writer." Most of these essays are reprinted from Selzer's earlier books (especially Mortal Lessons and Letters to a Young Doctor). Six pieces are new and include a commentary on the problem of AIDS in Haiti ("A Mask on the Face of Death"), musings on organ donation ("Brain Death: A Hesitation"), a conversation between a mother and son ("Of Nazareth and New Haven"), and the suicide of a college student ("Phantom Vision").

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In the second volume of her trilogy of memoirs (which begins with American Girl and ends with Speaking with Strangers), Mary Cantwell, a former fashion magazine editor and writer, describes her marriage, the birth of her two daughters, her career advancements, and her divorce, with Manhattan in the 1950s as the backdrop.

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