University of California Press Blog

Author Frank Huyler on Writing and Medicine

Novelist, emergency room doctor, essayist, poet — Frank Huyler is singular among writers. His second novel, Right of Thirst, was released to rave reviews this spring. UC Press has just published a new paperback edition of Huyler’s first book, the 1999 classic Blood of Strangers. We sat down with Huyler to talk about medicine, writing, and health care in America.

When Blood of Strangers was first published, narrative books on medicine were pretty rare. What interested you in the process of writing a first person account of the field?

It wasn’t calculated.  I’d written poetry pretty much exclusively when I was younger, but during my residency I realized that there were stories of great power everywhere around me.  So much medical writing is cerebral and distant, but the experiences I was having were the antithesis of that, to the point where the analytical intelligence hardly seemed to apply.  I wrote them down as I experienced them, or perhaps more accurately as I remembered them.

Do you think the popular perception of doctors has changed in the past ten years?

Well, it hasn’t gotten better.  Doctors are increasingly seen as employees, as cogs in the machine, and to a great extent we are.  It’s still a privileged profession, but it’s safe to say that it lacks the grand authority of the past. 

What do you think of the increased number of personal memoirs and reflections on medicine that have come out since The Blood of Strangers?

It’s an interesting phenomenon.  Partly it’s because of the drama inherent in the material, which television has taken full advantage of, and partly it’s because the public is both terrified and fascinated by the realities of illness and death that are so often denied or contextualized by popular culture.  Deep down we all know it’s there, these sorts of books are windows into it, and we want to look. 

Do you have any thoughts you'd like to share about health care reform, either on the small or large scale?

That’s a huge subject, but the bottom line is that our current system is immoral and appalling for a country as rich as ours.  With the exception of the very young and the very old, we have decided that health care is a commodity rather than a right, and the consequences for those at the bottom are both brutal and cruel in virtually every way.  Yet the system is also deliberately inoculated against the efficiencies that a true free market might create. 

 Your new novel Right of Thirst has just come out. How was the transition from memoir to fiction writing?

Certainly there is a difference between recounting lived experience and generating a purely imagined world, but that difference isn’t as great as one might think.  One always makes choices in what to say and how to say it.  Nonfiction is easier, in the sense that it requires less imagination, but it’s not a categorical distinction, at least for me.

Do you still collect stories from your practice?

Not formally.  But I didn’t with The Blood of Strangers, either—I simply wrote down what I remembered.  In a way that served as a filtering device: what stood out in my mind were the stories that had the greatest effect on me.

Does being a writer have any effect on your practice or perspective of being a doctor?

Writing is a means through which I try to make sense of the events I see and am part of, but I don’t think it’s helped me be a better doctor.  There’s a lot to be said for limited reflection in the clinical world, because medicine is above all else practical work.  It’s what you do that counts, not what you think. 

The Blood of Strangers is still widely read and still taught in medical schools throughout the country. What about it do you think keeps it so relevant?

It’s hard to know, of course, but I think it’s because I tried to be true to the experience, to the immediate moment, and to let the stories speak for themselves.  I tried not to get in the way, if that makes sense.  And the stories could take place anywhere, really, at any time.  So it’s not the kind of thing that easily becomes dated, or at least I hope not.  Whatever the reason, it’s great to see that it’s still being read.

Have you read anything lately that you've especially enjoyed?

I read a lot, and there are many books I enjoy.  If I had to pick a single relatively recent book it would be Austerlitz by WG Sebald, who was killed in a motor vehicle crash a few years ago. 

Harryette Mullen: Meaning and Wordplay

As announced last week, University of California Press author Harryette Mullen received the 2009 Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, one of the most distinguished awards in poetry in the United States. Here, Mullen reads her work at the Lunch Poems Noontime Poetry Reading Series, directed by Robert Hass, at UC Berkeley in 2004.

Mullen, an English professor at UCLA, published her book Sleeping with the Dictionary with UC Press in 2002. In the book, she compares the hierarchical, categorical Roget's Thesaurus to the democratically created American Heritage dictionary.

Mullen says she intends to be meaningful in her poetry: "to allow, or suggest, to open up, or insinuate possible meanings, even in those places where the poem drifts between intentional utterance and improvisational wordplay."

She is certainly known for her wordplay.

Academy Chancellor Susan Stewart describes Mullen as "a magician of words, phrases, and songs. She has sparked a revolution in poetic diction". In winning the fellowship, Mullen follows in the footsteps of profound past winners including Gwendolyn Brooks, E.E. Cummings, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore.

The fellowship is given in memory of Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Ingram Merrill, who, like Mullen, was known for wordplay and puns.

West Coast Premiere of Mark Twain's "IS HE DEAD?"

IS HE DEAD? West Coast Premiere is a hit!

After opening to rave reviews on Broadway, Mark Twain's IS HE DEAD? made its West Coast premiere at the International City Theatre in Long Beach, California. The Los Angeles Times calls the production "...a riot from beginning to end...a buoyant staging..." while the Examiner noted that "under the direction of Shashin Desai, even the intermission is fun."

Visit the International City Theatre website to view a video with excerpts from the play, hear audience reactions, read the reviews, or to buy tickets. The production closes May 24.

The play may also be coming to a theater near you! A full list of productions, both past and future, can be found at the Playscripts website.

UC Press published Mark Twain's IS HE DEAD?: A Comedy in Three Acts in October 2003.

Poet and Author, Robin Blaser dies at 83

Robin Blaser, prize-winning poet and author died last Thursday, just shy of his 84th birthday.  The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun published obituaries last week. Among the many books Blaser authored, UC Press published The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser (September 2006) and most recently Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, Revised and Expanded Edition (January 2007). Blaser was born in Denver, CO but grew up in Idaho. In 1944, he moved to Berkeley, CA where he became part of a group of poets (along with Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Robert Creeley, and others) as they later became instrumental in the so-called San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950's and early 1960's. Amid his many achievements, Blaser received a Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry in 2006 and the Griffith Poetry Prize in 2008.

Landmark Publication of Mark Twain’s Autobiography

University of California Press and The Mark Twain Project are pleased to announce the landmark publication of Mark Twain’s Autobiography. The book and companion website will be available in 2010 to coincide with the centennial year of Mark Twain’s death.

The autobiography will be the flagship publication in a year-long tribute to America’s most beloved author. Over the centennial year, UC Press and The Mark Twain Project plan a series of Mark Twain publications:

•    This fall 2009, UC Press will publish Mark Twain’s Book of Animals, edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, with authoritative texts established by The Mark Twain Project. The beautiful volume, illustrated with 30 new images by master engraver Barry Moser, will gather writings from the full span of Mark Twain’s career to illuminate his special attachment to and regard for animals.

•    In spring 2010, UC Press will issue new editions of Twain’s best known novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that will feature some of the extraordinary materials related to the novels: original publishing contracts, Mark Twain's handwritten letters to his family, and programs from early book tours.

•    UC Press and The Mark Twain Project will release new material on Mark Twain Project Online. The site, which provides access to more than 2,300 letters and documents, will feature new texts and functionality later this spring when the texts of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians are released.

•    The first of three volumes of Mark Twain’s Autobiography will appear in trade print editions in fall of 2010, and will also be available on Mark Twain Project Online documented with full scholarly apparatus.

"We are very proud of our longstanding and important publishing partnership with The Mark Twain Papers and Project. We're especially excited to make Mark Twain's Autobiography--a landmark publication in American letters--available to audiences worldwide," notes UC Press Director Lynne Withey.

Although portions of Mark Twain’s autobiography have been published, less than half of it has ever appeared in print much less in the way he intended. In the complete and authoritative edition, readers will find Mark Twain musing about his Missouri childhood, lamenting an embarrassing speech at the birthday dinner for John Greenleaf Whittier, and describing the villa near Florence that his family rented in 1904. Although many thought it was not possible, the editors of The Mark Twain Project are establishing a lucid text that is both fascinating to read and that remains true to the author’s original idiosyncratic intent. These editors are, in fact, the first to have actually understood exactly how Mark Twain wanted his text to appear and what it should contain

Bob Hirst, General Editor of the Mark Twain Papers and Project describes the effort that has gone into publication of Mark Twain’s last masterpiece: “It was a daunting task simply to figure out which of the 2500 pages of manuscript belong in the final form and which do not, or even that there was a final form designed by the author. Those pages have been in the Mark Twain Papers since 1910, but have never been fully understood by any of their successive editors. We are fortunate that Mark Twain Project editors with nearly 40 years of experience were able to work on and solve this problem. The result is that no one, until now, has ever read or could read the Autobiography of Mark Twain. We are confident it will be an exhilarating experience for all Mark Twain’s fans.”

Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910. He wrote many autobiographical pieces during his lifetime, but in 1906, he began the ambitious project of systematically recording his life for posterity. This project took up the remaining four years of his life. He always intended to speak from the grave; in fact, he included strict instructions for many of the pieces to appear no sooner than 100 years after his death.  He writes: “To the Unborn Reader, In your day, a hundred years hence, this manuscript will have a distinct value; & not a small value but a large one. If it can be preserved ten centuries it will have a still larger value— a value augmented tenfold, in fact. For it will furnish an intimate inside view of our domestic life of to-day not to be found in naked & comprehensive detail outside of its pages.”

The great writer’s prescient words have come true. Fascination with Mark Twain has not waned, and his autobiography stands to be one of the most anticipated and important publications of the twenty-first century.

Note: The image to the left is of a hand-written preface to Mark Twain's autobiography. You can click the image to view it larger.

Sight Map and National Poetry Month

As part of its National Poetry Month celebration, The Academy of American Poets featured Brian Teare's poem Long after Hopkins as Monday's poem of the day.

Brian Teare's poems are described by D.A. Powell as "turning the lyric on its ear," and by Rick Barot as "splendid and dirty prayers, fierce accomplishments in our disorienting times". Teare has received Stegner, National Endowment for the Arts, and MacDowell Colony poetry fellowships. Long after Hopkins appears in his book Sight Map, one of the newest works in the UC Press New California Poetry series.

Edited by Robert Hass, Calvin Bedient, Brenda Hillman, and Forrest Gander, the New California Poetry series presents works by emerging and established poets that reflect UC Press's commitment to innovative and aesthetically wide-ranging literary traditions. Other recent volumes are David Lau's Virgil and the Mountain Cat and Keith Waldrop's Transcendental Studies.

Learn more about National Poetry Month, and read Brian Teare's poem Long after Hopkins, here.

Fanny Howe Wins Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize!

Author Fanny Howe has received one of the highest honors in American poetry, the Poetry Foundation's 2009 Ruth Lilly Prize. One of literature's largest awards, the $100,000 annual prize celebrates a living poet of exceptional lifetime achievement.

Howe is one of the world's most eminent and experimental voices. She has published over 20 books, including several with UC Press: Gone: Poems (2003), The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life (2003), and Selected Poems (2000), which won the Gold Medal for Poetry from The Commonwealth Club of California and the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Howe also adapted Henia and Ilona Karmel's poems in A Wall of Two (2007), and wrote the book's introduction. Fanny Howe will be honored at the at the Pegasus Awards Ceremony in Chicago on May 19.

                             

2009 Guggenheim Fellowships Fund Creativity, Scholarship, Innovation

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 180 Guggenheim Fellowships this year. Among the recipients are several UC Press authors, honored for their outstanding achievements in Poetry, Film, Classics, Folklore/Popular Culture, and Anthropology/Cultural Studies. The winners, selected from around 3,000 applicants, will receive grants to fund ongoing projects or take their work in new directions.

By funding innovation, creativity, and scholarship, Guggenheim Fellowships contribute to the world's cultural and educational wealth. Fellowships are awarded to exceptionally accomplished and promising individuals working in any area of the arts, sciences, or academics—from fiction and film to chemistry and statistics. Grant amounts are tailored to the Fellow, and as there are no spending restrictions, Fellows may use the grants to further their work any way they choose. Congratulations to all the 2009 Guggenheim Fellows!

The 2009 Guggenheim Fellows and UC Press Authors are:

Poetry

Lyn Hejinian, author of The Language of Inquiry (2000)

Classics

Denis Feeney, author of Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (2007)

Folklore and Popular Culture

Joshua Gamson, author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (1994)

 

Anthropology and Cultural Studies

Veena Das, author of Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (2006); and coeditor, with Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, of Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery (2001); Violence and Subjectivity (2000); and Social Suffering (1997)

Kathryn Linn Geurts, author of Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community (2003)

Film

Lynn Hershman Leeson, subject of The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I (2005), edited by Meredith Tromble

 

 

Wallace Stegner’s Complaint

Philip L. Fradkin is the author of eleven highly praised books, including A River No More and The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906. He was the first western editor of Audubon Magazine and shared a Pulitzer Prize as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He is also the author of Wallace Stegner and the American West (UC Press, February 2009). For more information on the author, you can visit his website. The blog entry below sums up his thoughts on a recent article entitled, "Stegner's Complaint" by Timothy Egan from The New York Times.

By: Philip L. Fradkin

The centennial of Wallace Stegner's birth came and went last week, ironically leaving an electronic trail as the single greatest distinguishing mark of the event honoring this twentieth-century writer, teacher of writers, and environmental activist. Timothy Egan's column on the New York Times February 18 webpage, describing how that newspaper had ignored this prototypical westerner, would have brought painful memories and perhaps a wry smile to his face. At last the enemy has acknowledged its mistakes, he might have thought.

To Stegner, the Boston-New York publishing axis was "headquarters"–his somewhat derogatory term--and he felt the Times, particularly its book review, alternately ignored and pummeled him by not reviewing the books that earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award before they were published and by denigrating the honors they received afterwards. The final knife in the back was identifying William Stegner as "the dean of western writers" in a New York Times Magazine caption.

That the Egan column was distributed electronically by the very newspaper that had ignored him, receiving three hundred comments--the greatest single outpouring of opinion on the man and his work--in just a few days, would have amazed this man who typed with two fingers on a manual typewriter, resisted change, and refused to use an electric typewriter or computer until his death in 1993. But, of course, irony is a writer's tool, though one of the easier ones to employ, and I visualize Wally Stegner internally enjoying the fuss but continuing, with a composed face, to bang out his prose wherever he may be.

For this writer, who has used a computer since 1985, the number of comments and their thoughtfulness were the first indication that this type of electronic call and response may have merit. With the 125,000 words between the covers of "Wallace Stegner and the American West," I could not have come close to approximating how Stegner is revered today. I could only describe the tortuous road he traveled from a barefoot frontier youth to a man of great consequence to the West, the nation, and the world. So maybe the old technology has a place alongside the new technology. I think Stegner would appreciate that.

---

Below is an excerpt of Timothy Egan's controversial article "Stegner's Complaint," from The New York Times on February 18, 2009.

"The fact that a writer of Stegner’s stature felt ghettoized with the dreaded tag of “regional author” raises the question of whether our national literature is too tightly controlled by the so-called cultural elite -– those people who talk to each other in some mythic Manhattan echo chamber."

This article generated a tremendous response, as of today, February 24, 2009, there are 309 comments.

Here are two interesting comments:

Jane Smiley's Comment

Philip Fradkin's Comment

Article with Philip Fradkin, author of Wallace Stegner and the American West

On February 12, 2009, Libby Motika, Senior Editor of the Palisadian-Post wrote a fantastic article on Philip Fradkin and his new book, Wallace Stegner and the American West (UC Press, February 2009).

Writer Fradkin to Talk on Stegner and American West

By: Libby Motika, Senior Editor

Nature, culture, and enlightenment come together as Philip Fradkin, award-winning author and long time environmental writer, shares his biographical insight of author Wallace Stegner at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 17 in Temescal Gateway Park, at the corner of Sunset and Temescal Canyon Road. Fradkin will discuss and sign his 2008 biography 'Wallace Stegner and the American West' (University of California Press).

In his talk, hosted by the Culture in the Canyon Chautauqua series, Fradkin explores Stegner's life as an influential environmental writer,from his hardscrabble youth to his positions as head of the Stanford Creative Writing Program.

Stegner is best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Angle of Repose' and the National Book Award-winning 'The Spectator Bird.' However, he 'was a premier chronicler of the 20th century Western American experience and landscape,' Fradkin says.

'I can't think of anyone in the American West who has contributed on so many levels,' Fradkin told the Palisadian-Post. 'There are three aspects. As a writer of fiction and nonfiction, as a teacher of writing, and as a conservation activist.'

As a teacher of writing, Stegner influenced a number of writers, including Kentucky farmer, activist, ecologist and writer Wendell Berry, novelists Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey, and nature writer Edward Abbey, Fradkin says. 'Some went on to do really great things, some who didn't go on to do anything at all, but wrote incredible letters to Stegner.'

Stegner was a conservation activist, Fradkin says. In 1962, he founded the Committee For Green Foothills, (equivalent to the Friends of the Santa Monica Mountains), which launched a campaign to create open space above Palo Alto and in the foothills. 'He did a lot on both the local and national level. He was the special aide to Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall, chairman of the National Parks Advisory Committee and served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club.'

Two previous Stegner biographies were written by professors of literature and dealt mainly with him as a literary figure, Fradkin says. 'I was pleased to work with the man and the physical landscapes he inhabited; someone who was not perfect, but who had a code of behavior that he stubbornly adhered to.'

Although Fradkin wrote his biography 15 years after Stegner had died in 1993, he meet him briefly in 1981. 'I was the Western editor of Audubon Magazine, and had started writing books, the first one being 'A River No More,' about the Colorado River. I was working on a book about the Sagebrush Rebellion'a movement which pitted Western state ranchers and miners, who wanted to acquire public land in the West, against the federal government's open space protections.

'I had wanted to talk to him and I wrote him a letter, although I had purposely stayed away from him until that time because I didn't want to be overly influenced by any one person. I got a postcard back, saying that he was glad that we were going to meet and that he was reviewing my Colorado River book. It was the first validation I had received on becoming a writer.'Fradkin, a former Los Angeles Times newspaper journalist (1964-75), started the paper's first environment column. He recalls a story he wrote for the Sunday Times that suggested, 'making something of value of all the land purchases in the Santa Monica Mountains.' In 1978, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area was established.

The program and parking are free.

Note: Special thanks to the folks at the Palisadian-Post for granting us permission to re-post.