Poetry, diary, dialogue, commentary: all of those and more combine
in this complex and intimate recounting of the relationship between
the author and her therapist. The form Sedgwick (English/CUNY
Graduate Center) has chosen is similar to one called haibun, found
in 17th-century Japanese literature, which intersperses prose with
haiku. Here the haiku is derived from her prose reflections, which
are also sprinkled with excerpts from her therapist's notes.
Sedgwick brings to the therapy a "crew-cut, 250-pound, shy,
middle-aged" writer who has had a recent mastectomy followed by
chemotherapy, who is a respected scholar of English literature and
a pioneer of queer studies (though she herself is heterosexual and
has been married to the same man since she was 19 years old). Her
goal is to "fit the pieces" of her self, shattered in the wake of
the cancer and other events, back together - but not "the way they
were." Her therapist acknowledges that he has always liked to take
things apart and put them back together, plus he agrees to her
other conditions, including that he be a feminist and not
homophobic. On the face of it, the therapy followed an ordinary
route, exploring childhood, relationships with parents and
siblings, sexuality, concerns (or lack of them) about death,
dreams, and fantasies (despite a sex life that was in reality
relatively uneventful, her fantasies were of punishment and pain).
However, Sedgwick's pieces do come back together in a different
way: for example, she remains engaged with her work, but not
driven; and her experience of her body changes. The wrap-up is
startling but gives meaning to even the most banal episodes that
have gone before. Some challenging as well as tender moments, but
the studied format hides as much as it reveals about the patient
and her therapist - and creates a journal that is more than a
narrative but less than a poem. (Kirkus Reviews)
When she begins therapy for depression after breast cancer
treatment, the author brings with her an extraordinarily open and
critical mind, but also shyness about revealing herself. Resisting
easy responses to issues of dependence, desire, and mortality, she
warily commits to a male therapist who shares little of her
cultural and intellectual world.
Although not without pain, their improvised relationship is as
unexpectedly pleasurable as her writing is unconventional: Sedgwick
combines dialogue, verse, and even her therapist's notes to explore
her interior life--and delivers and delicate and tender account of
how we arrive at love.
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