Editor’s Corner
February 6, 2009
Nuts and bolts
By
Constance Hale and Andrea Pitzer
The inherent drama of life-in-the-balance situations makes medical stories natural candidates for narrative treatment, and we receive many, many submissions that recount agonizing recoveries from physical trauma. Yet these stories often fail. Sometimes, their scope is just not expansive enough, or deep enough: they can read like epics—with long arcs, a sympathetic protagonist, and a ponderous tone—only to end up feeling small-bore, more particular than universal. They can also be home to hype and bad writing, especially when scenes are played for tears, subjects are exploited, clichés are piled high, and readers are told how to feel.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer manages to avoid most of these pitfalls, not only in this month’s Notable Narrative “Fixing Mr. Fix-it” but also in such serials as “Johanna: Facing Forward,” in which a young woman has part of her face blown away by a jealous boyfriend but survives to testify against him in court.
The Oregonian won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for “The Boy Behind the Mask,” in which Tom Hallman, Jr., uses a classic approach to tell about a teenage boy named Sam who chooses surgery to create a more normal face from a congenital disfigurement. Hallman effectively sketches how even the way Sam comes in and out of rooms reflects an effort not to stand out or be noticed: “He moves like smoke.”
But classic medical narrative is not the only way to go. Richard Preston’s “An Error in the Code,” recommended to us by science writer Jennifer Kahn, tells the disturbing tale of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, which causes people to harm themselves and others, though they don’t want to. The author is repeatedly punched and insulted by subjects he comes to like very much, and his use of the first person lets the reader feel his anxiety about and for the unfortunate victims of a simple genetic error.
As a reminder that there is always a new angle to take on an old form, we enjoyed Kahn’s own “Stripped for Parts” from Wired, in which the author spends the night in a hotel room with a corpse being kept in a state of "donor maintenance." From the first sentence (“The television in the dead man’s room stayed on all night.”), it’s clear this story will not be business as usual.
Kahn, as well as The New York Times’ Amy Harmon and freelance writer Russ Rymer, will be part of a panel examining the intersection of narratives and science at this year’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, from March 20-22 in Boston. We hope to see you there.