Biography/Memoir – Page 9

Not always fun but it’s life…..

On May 24, 2009

I love to read first hand accounts….memoirs and such. I always have and I love all kinds.

Stories about cancer patients who are 16 or just been married a week before they were diagnosed or brave quadriplegics who learned to paint or type with a stick in their mouth….or people who climbed Mt. Everest and lost their fingers and toes and tried to call their spouse on their cell phone right before they die and the line is busy or the spouse talks to them while they slowly die in some deep crevasse…

Memoirs make me weep.

A lot of other people must enjoy them too because I can’t remember a time when there were so many! There is something so special about slipping into someone else’s life; whether happy or sad, tragic or victorious. People are fascinating and I love to see how others have done…LIFE.

The books I am talking about this week are certainly not light beach reading but if you or someone in your world is an addict or is mentally ill, there are some really good books out right now that might interest you. Or if you just want to be better informed about an ever growing segment of our population, here are some suggestions….
Michael Greenberg has written Hurry down Sunshine which is the story of his own daughter, Sally, who at the age of fifteen, was “struck mad” as her father puts it. Their harrowing and painful journey began on a seemingly ordinary day which ends with Sally being committed to a Manhattan psychiatric ward. As she said, “I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to.” This book is a diary of their family’s journey and Greenberg allows us to experience a fraction of the confusion and desperateness of their situation. Nothing happens to just one person within a family; there are effects and repercussions felt immediately and for years to come. This is a powerful and heartbreaking story.
Beautiful Boy by David Sheff is another recounting of a child and a family in crisis as the author writes about his son, Nic, who began his life of addiction as a teenager. Sheff writes, “Before Nic became addicted to crystal meth, he was adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied repeatedly, stole money from his eight year old brother, and lived on the streets.” The author traces this tragedy from its very first warning signs and walks us through as Nic falls deeper and deeper into addiction. At one point, Sheff felt like his total preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in and of itself. His perspective as both a father and a journalist help him create this unforgettable story. It grew out of an article he wrote for “The New York Times” magazine and is unforgettable as it shows how love looks and feels when you and your child are mired deep down in the trenches.
The Addict by Dr. Michael Stein is the story of a remarkable relationship between a patient and a caring committed doctor. The journey they make together over the course of one year of intense structure and rehab follows Lucy from the start of her treatment, through relapse, to her eventual long term recovery. It is also the story of a doctor, the author, who has devoted his life to reclaiming lost souls. This unusual account will leave you with lots of thoughts and questions to wrestle with and attempt to understand.

Escape from Bellevue by Christopher John Campion is a memoir that deals with mental illness and at the same time keeps a strong sense of humor! Campion was the lead singer of a New York ‘indie’ rock band called the Knockout Drops. They found quite a huge local following and at the very height of the band’s success, Campion began his downward spiral into alcohol and addiction. He chronicles life on the street and shares stories about the people he meets on his long road back. He enters a psychiatric hospital, Bellevue Hospital, and starts the difficult but sometimes hysterical life of a recovering addict. He also became the first patient since 1963 who escaped from Bellevue’s locked ward!! This book is one wild ride…..
The last title is Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent who also wrote Self Made Man; which appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List. In her new book, Vincent talks about the world of madness in which she lived and knowingly immersed herself in the hope of finding mental equilibrium on the other side. Over the course of several years, she committed herself to three different psychiatric facilities, each of varying socio-economic levels, and brings into our lives the people she meets along the way. It is a raw, incredibly vulnerable account of a life none of us would ever choose but is very much a reality for many people who are hurting but who have chosen to attempt real change.
There is so much we can learn from each other…..

The Thoreau You Don’t Know by Robert Sullivan

By admin

On May 9, 2009

In Biography/Memoir, Fiction

As more of our staff at Lemuria reads Woodsburner, the more well-loved this novel becomes. An eclectic and eccentric bunch, Zita, Pat, Nan and Ellis have all found Woodsburner to be an impressive debut for novelist John Pipkin. Don’t forget Mr. Pipkin will be here on Tuesday, May 12th for a signing and reading at 5:00 p.m.! (Click here for my blog and here for Ellis’ entry on Woodsburner.)

I still am so intrigued by the life of Henry David Thoreau as a result of reading Woodsburner that I have picked up a new book about Thoreau and his times. The Thoreau You Don’t Know by Robert Sullivan encourages readers to take another look at a man who has been traditionally considered a loner, to be one disconnected with the society and commerce of the world. Sullivan reveals a Henry David who was a flute player at parties, a teacher, a pencil-maker, a man known for his wise-cracks. He also asserts that when Thoreau spoke of “Nature” he spoke of the nature around us, even if it is not a nature calendar: “For a person living in a big city, it’s the ratty-and-partially-green-potpourri-of-life-around-you version of nature . . . and you have to bond with it, even when it is less than extraordinary” (Sullivan 68).

Sullivan explains that there was also an increasing amount of labor unrest in Concord, Massachusetts. Further coloring Thoreau’s world was the Panic of 1837, “a result of speculation and the government’s fiscal policy: after a large expansion of credit and loans and an expansion of the money supply . . . the wheat bubble popped” (61). Many citizens gathered outside Independence Hall in anger and protest against “the banking system, which, many critics felt, allowed the speculating of those with money to the detriment of those who did not have a lot” (61). Gosh, does that sound familiar? Thoreau worried and scribbled budgeting notes just as many of us are doing today with the current economic failure.

One reason I was compelled to read The Thoreau You Don’t Know was because in the Table of Contents there was a chapter entitled: “When the Woods Burned.” However, I was so disappointed when there was not even a mention of the fire until the last paragraph of the chapter. The only mention of the fire related to the fact that Thoreau’s reputation was rather tarnished after the fire, with the locals hissing “woods burner!” However, I am still not finished reading the entire book . . .

I am just haunted by Thoreau’s entry in his own journal in which he describes the occurrence of the fire and his response and rationalization, his description of the fire as a “great spectacle.” And then I ran across an article by Woodsburner author John Pipkin in which he explains how this “great spectacle” of a fire likely influenced Thoreau’s decision to begin his Walden experiment.

After you read Woodsburner, I encourage you to read this article from the online version of The Boston Globe and to read Thoreau’s journal entry on the fire.

After reading Woodsburner, I began to relax and realize that I should not be so serious when reading Thoreau. And when Thoreau was being so serious, I could smile at and find inspiration in his earnestness.

While The Thoreau You Don’t Know is very enlightening, it is surely written for the non-scholar in a conversational style. I find Woodsburner to be a masterfully-inspired novel. Pipkin gives us an “uninterrupted horizon,” a new set of eyes through which to see an iconic man just as Thoreau describes the ability to see life anew, “an uniterrupted horizon,” in “A Walk to Wachusett”:

And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur in it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heaven may not be seen from it, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon. (Excerpted from “A Walk to Wachusett”)

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet

By Former Lemurians

On April 26, 2009

In Biography/Memoir

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet is a slim volume that would have escaped my attention had I not chanced upon a brief review of it a couple of months ago. This rather meditative memoir by a woman –a civilian–who teaches literature at West Point is a gem—elegantly written, literary ,yet unpretentious, and surprisingly moving.

Samet sets out with the premise that literature can make a difference in how these young men perceive the world—giving them a broader sense of self , making them more aware and humane when they actually become soldiers in wartime—And to try to achieve that goal she hits them with the heavy stuff—Thucydides, Tolstoy, modern poetry from WWI and even some film classics—and —-they, for the most part, “get it”. These future warriors come across as not only honorable, intelligent and disciplined young men, but often seem more complex and thoughtful in their reasoning and more intellectually curious than I would have expected students at a military academy to be.

Her love of literature is contagious. And her “take” on some of the classics in light of who her audience is— i.e. young men about to be put in harm’s way—-in a very real way–( big time )—-lends a new perspective to some of the works. I found her references to War and Peace so intriguing and insightful that I’ve finally gained the courage to tackle this ultimate of literary tomes.

Finally—- however you may feel about war in general or this hideously conceived conflict we’re mired in now, you will come away from reading this book sharing the admiration Samset feels for these earnest, dedicated young men that she teaches, and hopefully with a new appreciation for the role that literature can play in people’s lives. But as Samet concedes in a heartbreaking moment that “There is no preparation–not in the Bible, not in The Aeneid, not in Henry James–wholly adequate to some of the experiences they may well endure.” -Billie

Category: Biography/Memoir (Page 9 of 9)

Not always fun but it’s life…..

The Thoreau You Don’t Know by Robert Sullivan

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet

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