Showing 2771 - 2780 of 2973 Literature annotations

The Shipping News

Proulx, E. Annie

Last Updated: Jan-29-1997
Annotated by:
Marta, Jan

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns, where the novel begins. In these few years Quoyle metamorphoses from the human equivalent of a Flemish flake--a one layer spiral coil of rope that may be walked on if necessary--to a multi-layered presence with the capacity for constantly renewed purpose and connection. Grief, love, work, friendship, family, necessity, and community effect this transformation, as does Quoyle’s ancestral home of Newfoundland, a place of beauty and hardship, of memory and reverie.

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Raising the Dead

Selzer, Richard

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

Selzer developed Legionnaire's disease and was comatose for 23 days in 1991. In this short book, he describes his illness and prolonged convalescence. The time of his stay in the ICU is lost to him, so he invents the story of what (might have) happened when he was comatose and delirious. In fact, he invents his own death and resurrection.

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Doctors and Other Casualties

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Wear, Delese

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Collection (Short Stories)

Summary:

This is a collection of short stories by a young physician, Stewart Massad, who completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology and a fellowship in gynecologic cancer. The stories are all written in the first person, all physicians. The subjects include the physical/emotional demands of residency ("Fatigue"), especially as they strain a marriage; the motivations of a doctor who runs an abortion clinic ("Healers"); and a young doctor facing his own fatal illness and his experience as a patient ("Casualties"). While the stories do portray the difficulties (and often angst) of training, they do so without the despair/cynicism often found in other accounts of the same experience.

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A Poster of the Cosmos

Wilson, Lanford

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Kohn, Martin

Primary Category: Literature / Plays

Genre: Play

Summary:

A powerful one person/one act play set in a police station in Manhattan. Addressing a cop "who would be at the other end of the table," Tom, a 36-year-old baker suffering from "survivor guilt," has been accused of killing his lover Johnny who had been dying from AIDS. Throughout the interrogation Tom offers insight into his and Johnny's lives prior to and during their relationship. His story also is permeated with attacks on an uncaring and ignorant society, especially when he mocks the interrogator's derogatory refrain, "You don't look like the kinna guy'd do somethin' like dat."

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The Lesbian Body

Wittig, Monique

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The Lesbian Body has been called a lesbian Song of Songs. It is a sensual, image-rich picture of one (or, perhaps, many) lesbian affairs. The images are rich in anatomical detail, even employing medical language to describe the lover's body.

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Dreams of a Doctor's Wife

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The story is told from the perspective of an obstetrician's wife. She encourages her husband as he finishes school and gets his first job. Then she becomes pregnant. She tells of the changes in her body and in her perspective. Her husband is busy treating other women, while she goes to childbirth classes alone. He arrives just at the end of the birth. She wants him to be with her more often, but understands his need to be with his patients.

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Healers

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The male narrator works in an abortion clinic. On a daily basis he faces taunts from protesters and the bloody fragments of fetuses. His only consolations are his loving dog and a female lover. He says that he sticks with the job because he loves women and can't turn them down when they ask for his help. One day, he comes home from work to find that a protester has killed his dog. His lover comes and comforts him.

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Casualties

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

An intern is on duty in a cancer ward. He especially deals with leukemia. He tells one of his patients that he understands how she feels as she cries, facing death. She turns on him, telling him that he can't possibly understand. A short time later, the intern grows weak and ill. He is diagnosed as having leukemia. He spends months in the hospital, feeling helpless as his old classmates treat him. He makes them promise to let him die peacefully when his time comes. He dies when an intern accidentally pierces his spleen while trying to tap his lung.

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Old Doc Rivers

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

Old Doc Rivers is an old-time doctor who believes in prompt decisions and quick action. Although he is recognized as an alcoholic and drug abuser, the people in the community still hold him in high esteem and often turn to him for help when all else has failed. His story is told from the perspective of several people in his home town after his death.

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A Night in June

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The doctor-narrator has been present at the birth of seven of Angelina's eight children. She is now in labor with the ninth. The mother is an Italian immigrant. The labor is prolonged, but without complications. The doctor spends much of the evening peacefully asleep in the kitchen.

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