I’m Ill, Therefore I’ll Write

Breathless: An Asthma Journal, by Louise DeSalvo (Beacon, 153 pp., $20) February Light: A Love Letter to the Seasons during a Year of Cancer and Recovery, by Heather Trexler Remoff (St. Martin’s, 167 pp., $20.95) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby (Knopf, 132 pp., $20) Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, by Ben Watt (Grove, 178 pp., $21) Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words, by Marty Jezer (Basic, 266 pp., $23) Second Act: Life after Colostomy and Other Adventures, by Barbara Barrie (Scribner, 255 pp., $23) The Seeing Glass: A Memoir, by Jacquelin Gorman (Riverhead, 255 pp., $22.95)

IT is often said that everyone has a book in him. Until I read these volumes, I thought this both trite and untrue; but now that disease has spawned a fast-expanding literary genre all its own-the memoir of illness-I realize that I was sadly mistaken. Death remains the most egalitarian of all human institutions, the inflexible rule still being one man, one death, and since it is generally preceded by at least one fatal illness, even among the previously healthy, the number of potential additions to this particular literary genre is nearly equal to the entire population of the world. Indeed, it far exceeds that number, inasmuch as non-fatal diseases are nowadays also thought worthy of memorialization. I’m ill, therefore I’ll write.

About the Author

Anthony Daniels

Mr. Daniels, a retired doctor who worked in several parts of the world, is the author of Mass Listeria, a book about health scares.

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Breathless: An Asthma Journal, by Louise DeSalvo (Beacon, 153 pp., $20) February Light: A Love Letter to the Seasons during a Year of Cancer and Recovery, by Heather Trexler Remoff (St. Martin’s, 167 pp., $20.95) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby (Knopf, 132 pp., $20) Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, by Ben Watt (Grove, 178 pp., $21) Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words, by Marty Jezer (Basic, 266 pp., $23) Second Act: Life after Colostomy and Other Adventures, by Barbara Barrie (Scribner, 255 pp., $23) The Seeing Glass: A Memoir, by Jacquelin Gorman (Riverhead, 255 pp., $22.95)

IT is often said that everyone has a book in him. Until I read these volumes, I thought this both trite and untrue; but now that disease has spawned a fast-expanding literary genre all its own-the memoir of illness-I realize that I was sadly mistaken. Death remains the most egalitarian of all human institutions, the inflexible rule still being one man, one death, and since it is generally preceded by at least one fatal illness, even among the previously healthy, the number of potential additions to this particular literary genre is nearly equal to the entire population of the world. Indeed, it far exceeds that number, inasmuch as non-fatal diseases are nowadays also thought worthy of memorialization. I’m ill, therefore I’ll write.