The Wounded Storyteller

To be blunt I hated this book. I guess that's technically not fair because I thought the ideas and concepts were interesting I just hated their delivery. I'm not 100% sure why his particular style or writing annoyed me as much as it did but it did. More times than I can remember I had to stop reading, reread a small portion, and exclaim (occasionally out loud) "What the hell is he talking about". This was mainly for two different reasons either I completely disagreed with what he said or I had no idea what the hell he meant.

Overall it reminded me of someone in high school writing a paper with a thesaurus on hand to use as many big words as they could. I'm not trying to be as overtly critical I just think if it wasn't written by a doctor and by a lay person who had gone through these experiences it would have been more enjoyable and less unnecessarily complicated. The other thing that made it hard to read was almost once a chapter, at least, I completely disagreed with him or thought there were other things or possibilities he didn't mention. I don't want to say narrow minded but that was the apparent tone, "this is the truth not only what I think and anything else is wrong". He didn't actually say that of course but it is the way it came across to me. Most of these criticisms aren't completely accurate I admit, it is just the way the book came across to me.

The way he mentions people's reactions to medical terminology being put to things they know by another name explains my dislike of the book in a way. Being practically a constant part of the hospital environment for the majority of my life I have seen the types of things he mentions. Especially a few years ago I volunteered in the pediatrics part of a hospital and saw various patients and their families and in different ways. Some were there for a day or two after something routine. One kid was there for poison ivy, and one was there constantly because his condition required constant care and medication. Experiencing all of these people and their stories made hearing his medical "jargon" explanations annoying.

As far as what I completely disagreed with or didn't get weren't as numerous as things I let slide or tried to ignore and just push on. The entire chapter on Chaos narrative was one I had a lot of trouble with. It honestly didn't make sense to me and annoyed me with his rigid classification of "chaos narrative". Just before the chaos narrative chapter he says something that I didn't get or agree with. "The tragedy is not death, but having the self-story end before the life is over". To me it seems like he is saying that once you know you are going to die you no longer have a story because you know how it is going to end. He says it is a tragedy because you have nothing left to say, no voice, and have no use for yourself. Not only do I not agree I don't think the logic makes sense.


The first thing I partially had to laugh with disagreement. I feel bad laughing about it but I found it slightly amusing that he was so surprised by something I have come to expect from the medical world. He mentioned how a Surgeon had published an article about a case he worked on, as well as a man, and the man was surprised that this article was about the surgeon and not himself. The author then says how the man was systematically ignored and removed from the article to become just a body. I don't think that is fair because the article was never intended to be about the man at all except for being the nameless patient. The article was about the exceptional skill and triumph of the surgeon to perform this task not about the bravery or strength of the man undergoing it. The way the article is described is as just that and I find it odd that he would assume it was about him.

The last thing I disagreed with was originated by Nancy Mairs about charity. She says that charity is never nice because the people who give don't see themselves as needy; the needy are others. He says that the "nice" need the needy to be the other to their niceness and by not acknowledging their need for the needy their charity turns into domination. At first I had trouble understanding this seemingly cynical stand point and then I just had trouble agreeing with it.

Overall it is a good book, I didn't enjoy it but I can still recognize it as a better book than most. It had interesting ideas and concepts, I didn't particularly like or agree with everything but that is what makes life interesting disagreement. If we all agreed the world would be boring as hell.