By Cheryl Pearl Sucher
As a writer and a bookseller facing major back surgery and a long recuperation, I saw the endless hospital and post-operative time as a unique opportunity to read all the half-finished tomes sitting on my night table -Doris Kearns Goodwin’s A TEAM OF RIVALS, David Grossman’s SEE UNDER LOVE and Jonathan Littell’s THE KINDLY ONES – books half-read because I was unable to carry them in my backpack due to their hefty cargo. Sure to finish those books before I was even sent home from the hospital, I hoped to tackle ULYSSES, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST and MOBY DICK once I had settled back into my apartment, swaddled in my white plastic and Velcro corset, waiting for my bones to heal.
On my last working day at the bookstore, I scavenged the shelves for books to read during my convalescence. My colleague, JT, who alluded to an extensive hospitalization of his own, offered some keen advice. “When I was recuperating,” he said, drumming his fingers on the information desk to the tune of some secret samba, “the best book that anyone brought for me to read was an anthology of super short stories. Microfiction. That’s all I could handle.”
Now JT is the bookstore’s sage and resident handyman, lean and true with the strength of a moose and the energy of four Red Bulls. His favorite writer is Knut Hamsun and he reads obscure Eastern European tomes with the joy that adolescents approach the TWILIGHT series. For him to say that all he could read during his convalescence was a collection of super short stories struck a proverbial fated chord of warning in my literary soul.
I’ve been a reader since pre-school, where I somehow taught myself to read by picking up my Bubbah’s discarded Yiddish newspapers and my father’s New York Posts. As a child, I picked books out of the library according to their size and newness. I read the original THREE MUSKETEERS at the age of 8, and read all of my mother’s book of the month club selections by the time I was in second grade. Reading had always been my love and salvation. And I believed that it would be my succor once I survived my 5 ½ hour back surgery.
Boy, was I wrong. And JT was right. There’s something ineluctable about the narcissistic demands of pain. It not only absorbs your body but your mind. For the first days following my spinal fusion, all my concentration was focused on how and when I was going to deign to turn my body and lift my head, acts which required long periods of courage-building and choreographic planning. My veins were rolling, tubes were entering and exiting most of my appendages, and a billowing pillow machine was squeezing and deflating the muscles on both my lower legs to prevent blood clots. I was attached to a narcotic drip that seemed to monitor the moments more than it palliated my agony, encouraging a vague but incessant nausea. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t concentrate. Still, I was grateful for the hanging television set and its accompanying earphones that allowed me to watch and listen to serials and silly shows day and night. One of my friends was mortified when I chose to watch HOUSE while in recovery, but my husband saw my attempts to answer all the questions on JEOPARDY as a good sign that my brain had not been unduly affected by all that anesthesia. (Only I knew the fuzziness that occurred when trying to remember full names.)
It’s been three weeks and counting, and I’m getting better every day, but my time is still organized around managing pain. I’ve been able to do some work (more each day – this is the first real writing I’ve done since my operation 3 weeks ago), I walk outside for forty minutes at least once a day and I read in spurts. But I’ve learned something about the demands of convalescence and hope to offer some advice as to what books or reading materials you can bring to your friends and loved ones when they are in the hospital or recovering from serious illness or surgery.
1) PUZZLES Sudoko, Crosswords, Mensa challenges – anything that engages the mind for moments but can be put away and picked up at will. But do a little research and respect the convalescent’s level of ability. Don’t give a BLACK BELT Sudoku champion a baby challenge book of puzzles. And find out which crossword puzzles the patient likes. Crossword puzzle fanatics are fanatical about which crossword puzzles they adore.
2) BOOKS OF MISCELLANEOUS FACTS My friend the composer brought me THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE –Everything You Think You Know is Wrong – by John Lloyd and John Michinson. This is one of those blissful reads that the ailing brain can approach with relish for one can open the book up to any page and feel like one is learning something relatively useful for astonishing friends at a boring dinner party or playing TRIVIAL PURSUIT or JEOPARDY!. For example, it answers such infuriating questions as WHO DISCOVERED PENICILLIN? WHAT DOES ‘KANGAROO’ MEAN IN ABORIGINAL? and HOW MUCH SLEEP SHOULD YOU GET EVERY NIGHT? (When you’re recovering, as much as you can manage at a stretch.) In this category, I can also suggest any of SCHOTT’S MISCELLANIES, or David Kamp’s THE FOOD SNOB’S DICTIONARY: AN ESSENTIAL LEXICON OF GASTRONOMICAL KNOWLEDGE and THE WINE SNOB’S DICTIONARY: AN ESSENTIAL LEXICON OF OENOLGOCIAL KNOWLEDGE. In this category, include books on movie trivia or literary grammar. But nothing too ponderous or heavy. Remember, the patient doesn’t have a lot of physical strength.
3) SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS This is the perfect time to introduce your friends to the quirky wonders of Miranda July, the poignant genius of Lorrie Moore, or the majestic breadth of Alice Munro. Their stories are revivifying, even when they concern sadness, and their ultimate reward is uplifting hope. I also personally adore the short story anthologies assembled by Jeffrey Eugenides – MY MISTRESS’ SPARROW IS DEAD (the stories are about love, not death) and David Sedaris’ CHILDREN STANDING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES. Both these collections assemble the new with the classic, and can introduce the convalescent to worlds unknown or unexplored.
4) MYSTERIES There is a reason that people who fear flying read mysteries on airplanes. They totally absorb one’s concentration and are relatively so far-fetched as to plunge you into worlds far away from the reality of the hospital bed. My latest favorite is Steig Larsson’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO – the first in his Millenium trilogy. I also like Kate Atkinson’s CASE HISTORIES – which has a wry British humor, and Tana French’s IN THE WOODS or THE LIKENESS. Remember, paperbacks are best.
5) FOOD WRITING This is a genre that has exploded in the past few years. For the most part, books about working in restaurants, deciding to live organically or learning how to cook are instructive without being didactic. AVOID AT ALL COSTS BRINGING THE CONVALESCENT books about how to change your life, how to heal, how to change your thinking, how to get along with your dreaded mother-in-law, how to take up yoga in a chair. These books will indirectly send the message that the patient isn’t doing enough to help themselves. Frankly, this can be insulting, especially when all the patient’s energy is dedicated to healing. Books on meditation are the exception, as are books on mental relaxation as long as they do not proselytize. Anything by Pema Chodron, the Buddhist monk, is helpful, as is anything written by or related to the Dalai Lama. I was once in a room with him and he radiated a sense of intelligence, humor and strength – all qualities one needs to persevere through recovery. Reading materials should therefore by uplifting, not inculcating. Books like Anthony Bourdain’s KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, Bill Buford’s HEAT, Julie Powell’s JULIE AND JULIA, Amanda Hesser’s collection of writers writing about their favorite food recollections EAT, MEMORY, Phoebe Damrosch’s SERVICE INCLUDED about working at Thomas Keller’s sublime restaurant, PER SE, are perfect choices.
6)MAGAZINES Invented for the convalescent. There’s a reason they inhabit all free spaces in doctor’s offices and beauty parlors. They are happily mindless. But remember my prior dicta. Don’t bring a member of the COUNCIL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS a copy of STAR! Magazine, and don’t bring an adolescent THE ECONOMIST. Remember your patient. FASHION and DÉCOR magazines are neutral and sunny for the most part.
Ultimately, it’s almost as important to know what not to bring as what to bring. But most importantly, bring yourself, and leave the patient whatever newspaper, book or magazine you have just finished. Truthfully, the most important thing a convalescent requires is company, of which books are a great example. Because when we are reading, are we not listening to the voices of great, old friends?
Ulysses is not for the faint of heart, and since you ought to be laughing your head off when you read it (or you’re missing something), I wouldn’t recommend it after a surgery, while you’re waiting for your parts to get put back together.
I was in the hosptial for a long, long time once. I agree with the short stories. Also, Beckett was my reading material. Funny, but not Joyce-kind-of-funny. I was amused by characters unable to get out of bed and comtemplating the meaning of life … while I was in bed contemplating the meaning of life. And waiting.
If I had to do it over again, I’d stock up on short stories, magazines, get my iPod working, and have a stack of DVD’s handy.
I made it here from David Kamp’s website. As someone who’s been convalescing for almost two years now I’m impressed by the overlap. In this time I’ve discovered my love of crossword puzzles, Sherlock Holmes, books about food, short stories, and the Snob books. Recently I’ve really been enjoying graphic novels. I just started Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine. It’s like halfway between a book and a movie. Easier to digest than a novel but not as stimulating as tv. I think I started with Maus.