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Memoirs

REWRITING ILLNESS

Elizabeth Benedict

A View of My Own

By turns somber and funny but above all provocative, Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own is a most unconventional memoir. With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling skills of a seasoned novelist, she brings to life her cancer diagnosis and committed hypochondria.

As she discovers multiplying lumps in her armpit, she describes her initial terror, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity as she indulges in "natural remedies," among them chanting Tibetan mantras, drinking shots of wheat grass, and finding medicinal properties in chocolate babka. She tracks the progression of her illness from muddled diagnosis to debilitating treatment as she gathers sustenance from her family and an assortment of urbane, ironic friends, including her fearless "cancer guru." In brief, explosive chapters with startling titles - "Was it the Krazy Glue?" and "Not Everything Scares Me" - Benedict investigates existential questions: Is there a cancer personality? Can trauma be passed on generationally? Can cancer be stripped of its warlike metaphors? How do doctors' own fears influence their comments to patients? Is there a gendered response to illness? Why isn't illness one of literature's great subjects? And delving into her own history, she wonders if having had children would have changed her life as a writer and hypochondriac. Post diagnosis, Benedict asks, "Which fear is worse: the fear of knowing or the reality of knowing?" Throughout, Benedict's humor, wisdom, and warmth jacket her fears, which are personal, political, and ultimately global, when the world is pitched into a pandemic. Amid weighty concerns and her all-consuming obsession with illness, her story is filled with suspense, secrets, and even the unexpected solace of silence. Elizabeth Benedict, whose novels include the national bestseller, Almost, and the National Book Award finalist, Slow Dancing, authored the classic book on writing about sex in fiction, The Joy of Writing Sex, in print for 25 years. Her personal essays have been selected as "Notable" in four editions of Best American Essays. She has written reviews and articles for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Esquire, Real Simple, and Daedalus, and been a regular contributor to Huffington Post and Salmagundi, writing on sexual politics, money, and literature, and on figures from Monica Lewinsky to British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. She conceived of and edited three prominent anthologies, including NY Times bestseller, What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most. Her books are featured regularly in reviews and interviews on All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and many other public radio shows, including the BBC's "Women's Hour," and Australia Public Radio. A graduate of Barnard College, she has taught creative writing at Princeton, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Columbia, and is on the Fiction Faculty at the New York State Summer Writers Institute.

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Book Published 2023-05-23 by Mandel Vilar Press

Comments

I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting--truly couldn't put it down. I'm moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club. Brava for this forthright and fascinating account.

It's not courage unless you're afraid, and Elizabeth Benedict has courage - and fear - in abundance, in this frank, riveting and often hilarious memoir. If you've had cancer, or love someone who's had or has it, or are just plain afraid of it - that's to say pretty much everyone - then you'll want to read this book.

The moment every woman dreads of finding a lump where no lump should be is the jumping off point for Elizabeth Benedict's startling, self-aware, and wickedly funny memoir. Whether describing her sister's teaching her Tibetan chants, the big city doctors who dismiss her concerns, or her problems with Susan Sontag's cancer metaphor critique, Benedict brings a novelist's deft storytelling to a narrative we think we already know. It's full of drama, humor, essential lessons for dealing with doctors, crushing vulnerability, and wonderfully, plenty of hope.

Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful, brave memoir about her own fears, especially fear of illness, which was eventually realized and had to be overcome, has so much to say about rational and irrational anxieties and the way they haunt women and deprive us of the larger life we crave.

Nuanced, thoughtful, with not a cliché in sight, Elizabeth Benedict's memoir is impossible to put down because the rich inner life of the writer - this excellent writer - is so compelling. The story she tells - vividly, in fits and starts, as it happened - is a reflection of encountering the unpredictable vicissitudes of life, and its one certainty.

Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who's figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It's the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.

This is more than a memoir; it's an experience.

Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict applies her formidable talents as a novelist to bringing to life the scenes and characters from her annus horribilis dealing with lymphoma. She writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.

By turns witty, vivid, and harrowing, Rewriting Illness reads as though Nora Ephron had written a book called, 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.' Especially good on the abrupt, stopped time feeling when the flow of life - city life, complicated life, sentient life - collides with illness.