• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Tag Archives: Virginia Woolf

Pensive Prowler #22: On Being Sick

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Pensive Prowler

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

A Country Doctor’s Notebook, Anton Chekhov, Illness as Metaphor, Mikhail Bulgakov, Oliver Sack, On Being Ill, The Bell Jar, The Doctor Stories, Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams

Pensive Prowler #22 by Dmetri Kakmi

On Being Sick

In 1926 Virginia Woolf asked why illness was not one of the great literary subjects, alongside war and love. Of course, she was howled down by critics who accused her of being silly and trite. But Woolf has a point.

Virginia Woolf

Maurice Beck And Helen MacGregor, Portrait of Virginia Woolf, 1925.

We all get sick. We are all laid low by cold, a broken leg or worse at some point. We know the wastes to which illness can take us, the deserts traversed. How isolating and debilitating pain can be. How terrifying, immobilising. How the spirits plunge to new depths. You really do drift off and feel as if you’ve stopped being part of human continuance. You feel as if you will never be well again and when you are well again you can hardly believe you had been to that far-off country. So close to death’s door.

So why not write about it?

Possibly because illness is perceived as passive and fiction (let’s stick to that for the time being) is an active progression from one point to the next. Even so, you’d think an innovative mind can turn the act of lying in bed, sick, into an active journey to the interior.

On the other hand we have to face the fact that when we are in rude health, we don’t want to think about illness. We want to forget it exists.

Things have moved on since Woolf wrote On Being Ill in 1926. In fact, they were on the right track all along and maybe Woolf was making a bigger point.

Anton Chekhov published his medical stories before the most famous member of the Bloomsbury group pioneered the modernist novel. Another Russian, Mikhail Bulgakov, wrote A Country Doctor’s Notebook the year before Woolf put in her two cents. Much later there was William Carlos Williams, the poet, with his The Doctor Stories, and John Berger with A Fortunate Man. For me, though, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is possibly the most famous offering to the genre, if I can call it that.

The Bell Jar.png

And we can’t go past Oliver Sacks’ important contributions to the field. Before all of them, however, there was Galen, the Greek physician and philosopher. I’m irritated by Susan Sontag so I’m not going to mention her book Illness as Metaphor. Damn, just did!

Still, Woolf is right. To this day if someone is asked to outline two or three enduring literary themes, they won’t put up their hand and go, “Illness!”

As you can tell, being sick has been on my mind lately. I’ve suffered from migraine most of my life. It’s been playing up lately and no amount of pill popping makes it go away. To add to my woes I have high cholesterol and now it seems I’m suffering side effects from the tablets I take to counteract its effects: nausea, unusual tiredness, itchy skin, memory loss, stiff and painful joints, unending thirst…

What gets me is this: how can pharmaceutical companies release medication knowing there are detrimental side effects? No one told me when I went on Crestor that my memory will go. Nor was I told that I will be shuffling around my home like an eighty-five year old because my joints seized up. I found out online.

What else are we putting in our bodies on a daily basis because we trust the manufacturer? Think of the chemicals in food, drink and water. We’re told chemicals are present in safe amounts and will cause no harm. But is this true? What are the long-term effects? What aren’t they telling us? How else can we account for cancers and the rise in food allergies in ‘developed nations’?

Why trust a faceless manufacturer whose one aim is profit? Government regulations mean nothing when politicians are in the pockets of corporations.

Let’s not forget in Victorian and Edwardian England, bakers adulterated bread with alum, which caused all sorts of gut problems, especially for children. Boracic acid was put in milk, with similar deadly results. Household cleaning products contained carbolic acid. Radium was put in toothpaste and chocolate. Of course people couldn’t understand why they were dropping off like bees. Now we look back and shake our heads. My bet is heads will shake over our folly in a hundred years’ time.

People will go, “What were they thinking?”

We didn’t think. We blindly trusted.

Illness strikes at the core because it’s a harbinger of mortality. It makes us vulnerable. It makes us question who we think we are and it reminds us that one day we will be dust. The body is not immortal. It’s a finite mechanism. Nor is it invulnerable, no matter how well we eat and how much we exercise. It will last however long it lasts. Why shorten its stay on earth by trusting multinational food and beverage companies that sure as hell ain’t gonna tell you the truth about their product?

If you don’t care either way, you will at least have plenty of books about illness to read as you drift off on your inflatable plastic mattress. And who knows? As you draw your last chemical intake, you might concede that illness is a vital literary topic.


Dmetri Kakmi

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Episode 224: A Craft Discussion About Virginia Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” and “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” with Vanessa Blakeslee!

17 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Diana Gabaldon, Ilyse Kusnetz, Lionel Shriver, Modern Fiction, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, Outlander, Vanessa Blakeslee, Virginia Woolf

Episode 224 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with Vanessa Blakeslee about Virginia Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” and “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,”

woolf-john-and-vanessa

plus Mingzhao Xu writes about Diana Gabaldon’s Outlanders series changed her life.

mingzhao-xu

TEXTS DISCUSSED

small-hoursMr. Kim (Kindle Single)mr-kim

outlanderNOTES

Suki Kim’s nuanced take on what happened in Brisbane can be read at The New Republic.

Lionel Shriver’s keynote speech from The Brisbane Writers Festival, “Identity Politics and Fiction,” can be read at The Guardian.

On September 30th, Richard Blanco is coming to Valencia College for the Winter Park Writers’ Festival. Richard Blanco’s reading is FREE, but you MUST reserve a seat via the Festival’s Eventbrite page.

EVENT DETAILS

  • Location: Winter Park Campus, Valencia College, 850 W Morse Blvd, Winter Park, FL 32789, Rooms 237/2424
  • 4 PM: Community Writing Class with Richard Blanco
  • 5:30 PM: Open Mic Reading (Emceed by John King)
  • 7:00 PM: Richard Blanco Reading

Episode 224 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Episode 166: A Craft Discussion About Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own with Vanessa Blakeslee!

15 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Aphra Behn, Virginia Woolf

Episode 166 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk about Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own with Vanessa Blakeslee,

Photo by Ashley Inguanta.

Photo by Ashley Inguanta.

plus Christopher Booth reads “The Disappointment,”

Chris Booth

by Aphra Behn.

Aphra_Behn

TEXTS DISCUSSED

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf Feminism and the Reader

NOTES

Check out The Drunken Odyssey’s fundraiser and related perks here.
The facebook troll pretending to be a customer service page for Target is deeply impressive. Check out the story here.


Episode 166 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Film
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • The Perfect Life #2
  • Episode 456: Lily Brooks-Dalton!
  • The Curator of Schlock #339: Black Scorpion
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #106: Crafting a Witch’s Story
  • The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #23

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel