Finally! I finished an entire book, specifically Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided. I had expected more from it because I really liked her Nickled and Dimed in America. The major difference in the two, I think, was that while Nickled and Dimed combined interviews with straight research, Bright-Sided was totally reporting on research. I often thought of Alice's comment in Alice in Wonderland when she wonders, "What is the use of a book … without pictures or conversation?" But, differing from Alice who stopped listening to her tutor, I did finish the book. In a general sense Bright-Sided takes on the issue of positive thinking. Is it possible for a person to think his way out of the disease or to a better financial situation? Ehrenreich argues the negative. She had experienced breast cancer and was fed up with pink teddy bears, pink ribbons, and other displays of positive thinking. Personally, having endured many years of people telling me the MS would improve or the treatments would work longer if I had a better attitude, I identified with her a whole lot. I guess that is why I had such hopes for the book and why I was ultimately disappointed. But on to specifics:
General stuff:
1) An interesting discussion, IMHO, of two terms: "Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice." (page 4) I agree. Personally I still have a lot of hope, but positive thinking that contradicts reality drives me crazy. I'll also amend that to say my hope comes from things I think I can still control. Or at least I can do my part towards controlling. Example: the writing. I can still write, but have accepted the fact that I have no control over a book being published or a play being produced. I write something that's the best I can do and then send it out into the cold, cruel world.
2) Then, less than a page later: "The truly self-confident, or those have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts. Positive thinking may be a quintessentially American activity, associated in our minds with both individual and national success but it is driven by a terrible insecurity." (pages 5 and 6) Finally, maybe I can relax; the MS is not my fault.
3) Ehrenreich shows a healthy dose of cynicism, which I admire. "Virginia Davis of Aurora, Colorado, was inspired to create the Remembrance Bear by a friend's double mastectomy and told me she sees her work as more of a 'crusade' then a business. When I interviewed her in 2001, she was expecting to ship 10,000 of these teddies, which are manufactured in China, and send part of the money to the race for the cure." ( page 23) I don't know about you, but the phrase "part of the money" jumped out at me. How altruistic can one businesswoman be?
4) "The effect of all this positive thinking is to transform breast cancer into a right of passage—not an injustice or a tragedy to rail against but a normal marker in the lifecycle, like menopause or grandmotherhood. … Even the heavy traffic and personal narratives and practical tips that I found so useful bears an implicit acceptance of the disease and the current clumsy and barbarous approaches to its treatment: you can get so busy comparing attractive headscarves you forget to question whether chemotherapy is really going to be effective in your case." ( page 29) I never got caught up in scarves, but I often wonder if my writing is my scarf. It's not dealing with the disease, but is one thing that makes me totally forget about MS and what it is doing.
5) "Two researchers on benefit finding report that the breast cancer patients they have worked with have mentioned repeatedly that they view even well-intentioned efforts to encourage the benefit finding as insensitive and inept." (page 41) I agree, but I force myself to concentrate on the intent of the speaker rather the message itself. Of course, there is the other extreme. Last week a nurse came by to draw blood, and I told her my coughing had returned and she said, "You do know it's the MS don't you?" I told her yes, but missed my line which should have been, "So doesn't that make what I do before the MS wins the important thing?" I always think of my best lines about 24 hours after the opportunity to say them.
6) Ehrenreich often takes on the value of the power of group think, and always I was reminded of a section from a play by Christopher Durang. The narrator is talking about a production of Peter Pan and he describes the following: "The voice belonged to the actress playing Peter Pan. You remember how in the second act Tinkerbell drinks some poison that Peter’s about to drink, in order to save him? And then Peter turns to the audience and he says that Tinkerbell’s going to die because not enough people believe in fairies, but that if everybody in the audience claps real hard to show that they do believe in fairies, then maybe Tinkerbell won’t die. And so all the children started to clap. We clapped very hard and very long. I clapped so hard my hands started to bleed. Then suddenly the actress playing Peter Pan turned to the audience and she said, “That wasn’t enough. You didn’t clap hard enough. Tinkerbell’s dead.” I like that monologue. So much for group think.
7) Ehrenreich talks about pastors at the mega-churches who have substituted positive thinking for lectures from the Bible. One attendee is quoted as saying, "We love it. We don't miss a Sunday. The message is always very positive and the music is great." ( page 144.) Don't you just wish the person had gone ahead and ended with, "I'll give it a 72. It has a great beat and you can dance to it"?
8) And don't you love the following: "Until his death in 2008, Sir John Templeton was fond of bringing scientists and the theologians together with the aim of finding common ground in luxurious tropical resorts." (page 166) "… in luxurious tropical resorts" pretty much says to me what the author thought about the whole thing.
9) I remain fond of her humor. "A restaurant not far from where I live calls itself 'The Positive Pizza and Pasta Place,' apparently distinguishing itself from the many sullen and negative Italian dining options." (page 195)
10) Nearing the end of the book, Ehrenreich writes, "a vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness; in fact, it makes it possible. How can we expect to improve our situation without addressing the actual circumstances we find ourselves in? Positive thinking convinces that such external factors are incidental compared with one's internal state or attitude or mood." ( page 205) Go, Ehrenreich!
Words
1) Neurasthenia. "Neurasthenia was hardly ever fatal the but to some observers it seemed every bit as destructive as the infectious diseases." Dictionary.com defines neurasthenia as "nervous debility and exhaustion occurring in the absence of objective causes or lesions; nervous exhaustion" and Ehrenreich goes on to describe a mistreatment of the disease as the basis for the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." (Thanks, Julia, for getting me to reread it. Its effect lingers.)
2) Chthonic. "… lingering like the echoes of archaic chthonic cults …" (page 132) dictionary.com defines chthonic as " –adjective Classical Mythology, of or pertaining to the deities, spirits, and other beings dwelling under the earth." OK . I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've knowingly encountered the word.
3) Genomes. "… This is how we have reproduced our genomes." ( page 199) Dictionary.com: noun, Genetics ,a full set of chromosomes; all the inheritable traits of an organism." On some level I'm pretty sure I knew, that but since I wasn't completely sure, I looked it up.
4) Cormorant. "The cormorant restlessly scans the water for expected splashes …" (page 200) dictionary.com: "noun, any of several voracious, totipalmate seabirds of the family Phalacrocoracidae, as Phalacrocorax carbo, of America, europe, and Asia, having a long neck and a distensible pouch under the bill for holding captured fish, used in china for catching fish." I knew generally; now I know more specifically. But I would've been happy with pelican.
Proofing the above, it seems I got more out of the book than I thought I did. I'll go ahead and recommend it, providing the reader can wade through boring writing.
