eAudiobook
hoopla Instant
Pain Studies
Year
2020
Language
ENGLISH
Duration
3h 21m
Publication Information
Dreamscape Media
Summary
In this extended lyric essay, a poet mines her lifelong experience with migraines to deliver a marvelously idiosyncratic cultural history of pain-how we experience, express, treat, and mistreat it. Her sources range from the trial of Joan of Arc to the essays of Virginia Woolf and Elaine Scarry to Hugh Laurie's portrayal of Gregory House on House M.D. As she engages with science, philosophy, visual art, rock lyrics, and field notes from her own medical adventures (both mainstream and alternative), she finds a way to express the often-indescribable experience of living with pain. Eschewing simple epiphanies, Olstein instead gives us a new language to contemplate and empathize with a fundamental aspect of the human condition.