Intoxicated by My Illness

...His portrait of Percy When Broyard's a patient in a hospital as the quiet and emergency room, he's treated very well, unassuming hero of it rim with more emotional closeness from the his own life is very doctors and nurses than he's used to ex- moving...

...But as published economists view them as development erally made gains through more jobs, eswork, his idiosyncrasies are none of these models for the whole third world...

...For example: A friend with lung can- Robert A. Senser is not among the region's economic tigers, cer dies not of his disease, says Broyard, the Philippines, and excludes two city-states but because a stroke left him unable to that are, Singapore and Hong Kong...

...No other period in Christian history was as well informed about the Talmud and the Midrashim as the seventeenth century...

...We also must think gle him...

...Most significantly of all, he ignores Highly recommended...

...Price (including P&H): apore by the international human rights how authoritarian governments and foreign Hardcover $21.00...

...He rejects the first ticket to friendship...

...When he ary source of modern prejudices toward him a little more than a year later...

...And though INTOXICATED BY MY ILLNESS wrongheaded and offensive...

...And matter, he tends to see each country's of Intoxicated by My Illness, during the you don't have to be an econometrician labor market policies and practices as last months of his life...

...There is an etiquette to being sick...

...As scholarship became more sec- eryone I have ever met or heard of, the di- nothing but the coarser forms of anxiety, ular, it found the particularity of Judaism agnosis of cancer is terrifying, the treatment it's only natural for the doctor to feel an and the form of Jewish life inimical to the is disturbing and painful, and if the out- aversion...

...Without a way of recovering another ancient tra- a poisoned heritage...

...He does not comment on the story in perfectly fact, mentioned in passing, that while the simple and straightdoctors and nurses were working on him Walker ercy forward prose...

...He "the supervising physician came in...

...I looked over her shoulder people I know," "people for whom infor- plication, requires "wit" in another as a while she wet my shirt again...

...1:1 ognize the difference, and thus seldom you look behind his macro data...

...She spoke the lan- nection to `Jew down' death...

...takes into account the gross violations of Although Galenson compiles a great human rights that afflict much of the re- deal of miscellaneous historical informaAnother of our "Books of Distinction" gion...

...In spite of all that Christianity has Christians and Jews...

...Kant had not appreciated the predica- Broyard, instead of confronting the real- Throughout the book, Broyard ignores ment of the Enlightenment Jews when he ity of illness, tried to rise above it...

...Whatever one's view Jewish publishing families in Italy, at done to Jews over the centuries, and the on that matter, his book opens up an unSoncino for example, there would have persistence of anti-Jewish attitudes among explored avenue to continue a long-standbeen no books to study), and as they had Christians today, Christians alone have the ing discussion within the Christian closer contact with Jews they discovered spiritual and theological resources to see communities...

...An illuminating look at one of the What about the vast majority of people who don't have the money and the friends and South's gifted literary voices...

...The father, mation is a religion...

...virus that ran out of control for nearly two this way, but in his final pages he suggests To learn Hebrew and to have access to hundred years...

...Manuel would not put things Latin antiquity...

...pecially for women, and through modestly things...

...I toss him about...

...Voltaire, for example, was no- Madeline Marget to heart, a damaging one...

...However, guage of hysteria, which I have never of his father's teachings, Broyard declares I see Broyard's quest through my knowl- learned, but which I suspect is made up that he's found "a certain predisposition edge of clinics full of desperate people, each mustering the courtesy they need to subdue sorrow and fear and to best evoke the ever-late, often brusque, doctor's attention and hope...

...The euphoric literature acknowledgment does not accurately porIllness is a denial and falsification of suf- about East Asia also seldom bothers to rec- tray the status of the area's workers, once fering...

...with ritual Judaism, he became so isolat- from dreadful diseases...

...who offers his self-centered musings as scholarship and writing on the Jews took prescriptions, making his book, if taken a new turn...

...the tunately, in Broyard's case, the result is doctor, he starts with the advice of friends 22: 15 January 1993 Commonweal who, he claims, "are the two most critical are we to think of a person who, by im- of cliches...

...paper I work for and said he was glad to JAY TOLSON -Boston Globe meet me...

...Statutory igrate the expression of agony, in ourselves human development...

...Thailand, and the Philippines...

...fold...

...Income disor someone else, over a malignant growth, annual reports of the United Nations tribution has shown little progress, and the a painful or isolating disability, or a pre- Development Program (UNDP) spell out evidence of that is "not unambiguous," he mature or lonely death, instead of giving the difference, a belated finding still not writes...

...As I've posed to mark bourgeois society...

...What about the doctor's absolute obligation ed that Kant advised him to return to the In Intoxicated by My Illness, Anatole to be compassionate...

...The father Semite" who preferred Jewish doctors beof a tragic sense of life in him that I could has just died and Broyard indicates, as he cause he "believed that a Jewish doctor see, no furious desire to oppose himself to has elsewhere in the story, the mother's was closer to God and could use that confate," and so Broyard moves on, until he terrible shortcoming...

...This collecChristian scholars subjected Jewish beliefs And Other Writings on Life and Death tion of essays, jottings, book reviews, and to criticism, they displayed "an inquisi- Anatole Broyard, edited by Alexandra an autobiographical story reveals a sutiveness about the Jews themselves...

...In errors but were designed to "render this with a lethal illness, as Anatole his essay "The Patient Examines the nation odious and despicable...

...tame the dreadful thing that was happen- "little dragons" (Japan being the big drag- His country-specific findings are that ing to him, were therapeutic and ad- on), has been so vigorous that many workers within the five countries have genmirable and lovable...

...A puling the refugee from the ghetto whose philo- expectations and make demands that are person is not appealing...

...speak, and "He died not of cancer exact- t is almost impossible to visit Galenson's explanation for this exclusion, ly, but of pneumonia, as if his lungs had downtown Singapore or Seoul or their "truncated economies," overlooks filled with trapped speech and he had Kuala Lumpur, as a tourist or as the regional and global economic reach of drowned in it...

...Association...

...When looking for a binic form had to be abandoned...

...For that Broyard wrote this sentence, and most ing their bustling modernity...

...The sophomoric writer of "What the Cystoscope Said," published in 1954, THE PRICE OF 'ECONOMIC MIRACLES' hasn't matured in the later writings that make up the rest of Intoxicated by My Illness...

...Literature's purpose is to re- national organizations or by their mem- being modern welfare states...

...For ev- shows nothing but a greediness for care, the Jews...

...Consequently, anger at this precious writer is the only rational response...

...He cites many writers, LABOR AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN FIVE gardless of its ideological inspiration...

...n@po @ii j PfrCrr.11nC...

...What about the good on the other hand, is a great guy, although urologist he goes to...

...brings the er they are...

...He's read a lot, and discusses literature's contribution to the understanding of illness...

...the expectation of both to find the tailormade care they would like-if, that is, they - HOUSTON POST had the education and the sense of entitlement to imagine what that would be...

...It is im- I never act sick with my doctor...

...I am sure that to to be impressed by East Asian GNP fig- walled off by borders-a perspective that his family and friends his ability to keep ures...

...chewing gum to the "demise of the rule authoritarianism impacts on industrial re84 extremely thought-provoking short chapters...

...In short, to use his own summary, these experiences the recognition decen- generally recognized in practice by inter- the five countries "are a long way from cy demands...

...He has "no sign "What the Cystoscope Said...

...I never act sick...

...For blaming the sophical acumen Kant esteemed, broke more likely to help people who suffer victim, I've never seen the equal of this...

...I throw him from lows in society and made coexistence about the afflicted and those who care for hand to hand, and he hardly knows what unfeasible...

...Others such as Joseph philosopher of the absolute moral way on their own terms and to discern the inScaliger (1540-1609), a French humanist, could envisage no mixed solutions...

...In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries religious and theological as well as TAINTED ELIXIR historical and philological interests inform the work of scholars...

...Of course, many doctors and nurses, in emergency rooms and else- "This splendid where, are good to their patients, whoev- biography...

...committee of the New York City Bar employers have evolved various forms of Pay by MasterCard, VISA, or check...

...He describes (this very short book is also a repetitive sonable Oriental rug" passes muster, but her-or the character based on her-in one), "an old-fashioned Southern antithe man himself falls short...

...were driven by a desire to master arcane loftiest authority of the Germanic world "The Jews," in the words of Vatican II, languages and saw in the study of Hebrew left his fellow citizens and their progeny "still remain most dear to God...

...torious in his contempt of the Jews, and Style was all-important to Broyard, and as one critic observed, his writings on the he judges himself, other people, and matJews were not only filled with malicious t is an awful thing to be stricken ters of life and death by their veneer...

...Suite 15 growth has benefited ordinary working oration is essential for an understanding Wilmington, DE 19803.4129 stiffs, who generally are among the most of the East Asian free-market model...

...In rendering their judg- the ongoing sustenance of the Jewish peodition just as the Renaissance had reap- ments on Judaism, Kant and Voltaire may ple, Christian life and faith would be impropriated the inheritance of Greek and have infected a continent with a rampant poverished...

...The timate bond between Christians and Jews...

...a businessperson, without admir- both Singapore and Hong Kong...

...Ceueland Plain Dealer The choices Broyard makes in qualities to value and damn in people are yet another indication of his fallacious thinking...

...national and transnational collaboration to Vital to an evaluation of the East Asian repress the basic rights of workers...

...Both portant to acknowledge these truths in said, I have been accelerated by my illKant and Herder agreed that the ritual rab- order to honor the brave people who strug- ness, and when my doctor comes in, I jugbinic code alienated Jews from their fel- gle against them...

...But did Broyard really believe reader closer to Percy that his status as a longtime editor and re- through a subtle, viewer for the New York Times, and the critical and profoundly sense of self he had from having held such power, didn't have enormous impact-not loving analysis of his only during this incident but all the time- life and art...

...His explanation is that in emer-New York Times gency rooms "there is no bureaucracy: I in the uins Book Review was not so much a patient as a needy person coming in from the street...

...The 1991 and 1992 social benefits are meager...

...periencing...

...The giving everybody-from Tolstoy to Bernie ASIAN COUNTRIES latest book by Walter Galenson, professor Siegel, Kafka to Kubler-Ross-equal South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, emeritus of economics at Cornell Uniweight, but his insistence on false paral- Thailand, and the Philippines versity, briefly explores this neglected lels and metaphors and his overblown Walter Galenson subject for South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, claims for the gift of language drown out Praeger, $39.95, 144 pp...

...development model is how economic Information about that repressive collabOne Wellington Rd...

...The doctor's waiting people, serious people, oppressed people "a halfhearted anti-Semite" in the story, room with its "well-made, well-filled book- that this standard is likely to exclude...

...on the manner with which he was treated...

...0 that Jewish practices and institutions of the day helped illuminate the ancient sources...

...that even the maligned phrase "JudeoJewish sources these scholars and the gen- Secularism is no friend of the Jews, for Christian" has promise as a way of speakerations that followed had to turn to Jewish it has no way of conceiving of the Jew as ing about the unique bond between scholars and publishers (without the great Jew...

...Such the impact his privileged position had on stated ex cathedra that Judaism in its rab- an effort could be admirable, but unfor- the care he received...

...enlightened ideals that now were sup- come is death, grief is inevitable...

...This seleclessons the good writers, at least, have for tion includes one East Asian country that us...

...Broyard was in the summer of Doctor," Broyard says, "If a patient exWhat comes clear from Manuel's sur- 1989, when he discovered he had pects a doctor to be interested in him, he vey is that the Enlightenment is a prim- the prostate cancer that would kill ought to try to be interesting...

...For all its "Tolson tells this occasional horrors, the emergency room is a like a medical game, a continual im- intimate and moving provization...

...Quality Paperback $14.25...

...In fact, the economic growth of some weakens much of his comparative analyworking, and his wish to contain and East Asian countries, hailed as "tigers" and sis...

...Acceptance of Broyard's words or Of course economic development, as higher real earnings in manufacturing tone could tempt readers to dismiss or den- usually conceived, is not the same as jobs, partly because of long hours...

...Mon-Sat 302.764.8918,9.9 EST vulnerable persons in any economy, re- The reason for this omission may be that 24: 15 January 1993 Commonweal...

...and in "The Patient Examines the Doctor" cases, an antique desk and chairs, a rea- Broyard's mother, for one...

...Governmental intrusion into the tion on industrial relations and on politiPUSH BACK THE NIGHT: lives of ordinary Singaporeans, for ex- cal changes in governments, he provides A Clergyman-Columnist's Views on ample, runs the gamut from a ban on hardly any analysis of how governmental the Relevance of Religion in the Nineties, by Milton H. Keene...

...10% S p [' lit S l F: "All my friends are wits," he says, paying a compliment to his intimates...

...But what Commonweal 15 January 1993: 23 in myself in favor of Jewish doctors...

...He had knows, like Percy, how recognized my name from seeing it in the to make words work...

...Even that veal the truth, but Intoxicated by My ber governments...

...As a result finds a physician who suits him...

...With Broyard percilious, superficial, and affected man, the coming of the Enlightenment, however, Clarkson Potter, $18, 135 pp...

...of law," to quote an indictment of Sing- lations...

...Yet, when Solomon Maimon, them and try to cure them, in order to form to do with me...