Elizabeth Benedict's Blog - Posts Tagged "memoir"
"A NYC Cancer Memoir- A fine antidote to anodyne cancer accounts"
I've written a lot of novels and personal essays on everything from my hair to Monica Lewinsky to a famous murder in my family, but REWRITING ILLNESS: A VIEW OF MY OWN is my first book-length memoir. The content is courtesy of a little cancer that came my way in 2017.
The pub date is May 2023. 2023 minus 2017 means I'm still alive. And I'm not sick. Maybe call this a cancer memoir with a happy ending. (Those were the only ones I wanted to read when I was sick.)
I'd swap having had cancer for getting a book out of it, if I had that choice to make. Key words: "having had cancer." It has not recurred since my last treatments in early 2018, and the doctors say the likelihood of recurrence at this point is in "low single digits."
Does the world need another cancer memoir? I know you are asking yourself this right now. And if you're not, let me ask it for you. I struggled with this question for all the years I was writing the book, and trying to make it something other than "another cancer memoir."
When a literary critic friend read an early draft and said, "I think only your friends will be interested in this version," I took note. I rewrote it 127 times or maybe it only felt like 127. Maybe it was only 15 or 29. But when another writer friend said: "I am writing a book now with no chapters longer than 900 words," I listened up all over again. I rewrote my memoir for the 15th or 28th or 123rd time. And something happened when I did that: the short chapters -- some a paragraph of two -- changed EVERYTHING.
I was suddenly writing chapter titles like: "Not Everything Scares the Shit Out of Me," and "Maybe it was the Krazy Glue," "What Brings You Here Today?" and "Where is My Husband?" In reducing the story to bite size bits, I found my voice, or a voice in which to tell the story that had not exactly fallen into my lap but burrowed its way into my armpit in the form of a swollen lymph node that turned into three swollen lymph nodes and was eventually diagnosed as lymphoma.
I found the lump in my arm on June 9th. I went to the doctor on June 10th -- and with my health insurance, my New York moxie, an office of women doctors, and access to NYC hospitals, it took 4 months to get diagnosed. Women doctors told me my problem was my anxiety. Doctors went on vacation for the summer after doing a biopsy and telling me someone from the office would call me.... My sister taught me Buddhist chanting. I drank gallons of wheat grass juice hoping to shrink the lumps.
I had a long, long time to think about what it meant to (maybe) be sick, what it meant to have doctors who told me to stop worrying, whether Susan Sontag's ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, about cancer and its metaphors, was still relevant, what it meant to have health insurance and live in the medical capital of the world and take such a long time to figure out that the huge lump in my arm was ... cancer.
I took a lot of notes. I cried. I raged. I tried NOT to tell my husband how terrified I was every time I opened my mouth. Finally, I found a doctor known as legendary in the field who treated my unusual case. I ended up in the hospital where Nora Ephron had been treated for leukemia and had died, and I was happy to be there, because I knew it meant I was getting the best care available. I was happy even though I knew not everyone makes it out of that place alive.
I'm alive. I wrote a cancer memoir that some of my favorite writers say is "impossible to be put down" and "superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining," and "Witty, vivid and harrowing ... as though Nora Ephron had written a book called 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.'"
And I was lucky enough to find a fantastic publisher, Mandel Vilar, co-publishing with Dryad Press. You can pre-order it at Bookstop.Org (to go indie) or at that other place. You can go to my website, and you can ask me for a review copy, if you're a reviewer. ElizabethBenedict.com
Thanks for reading so far. I am in your debt.
~~Liz Benedict
The pub date is May 2023. 2023 minus 2017 means I'm still alive. And I'm not sick. Maybe call this a cancer memoir with a happy ending. (Those were the only ones I wanted to read when I was sick.)
I'd swap having had cancer for getting a book out of it, if I had that choice to make. Key words: "having had cancer." It has not recurred since my last treatments in early 2018, and the doctors say the likelihood of recurrence at this point is in "low single digits."
Does the world need another cancer memoir? I know you are asking yourself this right now. And if you're not, let me ask it for you. I struggled with this question for all the years I was writing the book, and trying to make it something other than "another cancer memoir."
When a literary critic friend read an early draft and said, "I think only your friends will be interested in this version," I took note. I rewrote it 127 times or maybe it only felt like 127. Maybe it was only 15 or 29. But when another writer friend said: "I am writing a book now with no chapters longer than 900 words," I listened up all over again. I rewrote my memoir for the 15th or 28th or 123rd time. And something happened when I did that: the short chapters -- some a paragraph of two -- changed EVERYTHING.
I was suddenly writing chapter titles like: "Not Everything Scares the Shit Out of Me," and "Maybe it was the Krazy Glue," "What Brings You Here Today?" and "Where is My Husband?" In reducing the story to bite size bits, I found my voice, or a voice in which to tell the story that had not exactly fallen into my lap but burrowed its way into my armpit in the form of a swollen lymph node that turned into three swollen lymph nodes and was eventually diagnosed as lymphoma.
I found the lump in my arm on June 9th. I went to the doctor on June 10th -- and with my health insurance, my New York moxie, an office of women doctors, and access to NYC hospitals, it took 4 months to get diagnosed. Women doctors told me my problem was my anxiety. Doctors went on vacation for the summer after doing a biopsy and telling me someone from the office would call me.... My sister taught me Buddhist chanting. I drank gallons of wheat grass juice hoping to shrink the lumps.
I had a long, long time to think about what it meant to (maybe) be sick, what it meant to have doctors who told me to stop worrying, whether Susan Sontag's ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, about cancer and its metaphors, was still relevant, what it meant to have health insurance and live in the medical capital of the world and take such a long time to figure out that the huge lump in my arm was ... cancer.
I took a lot of notes. I cried. I raged. I tried NOT to tell my husband how terrified I was every time I opened my mouth. Finally, I found a doctor known as legendary in the field who treated my unusual case. I ended up in the hospital where Nora Ephron had been treated for leukemia and had died, and I was happy to be there, because I knew it meant I was getting the best care available. I was happy even though I knew not everyone makes it out of that place alive.
I'm alive. I wrote a cancer memoir that some of my favorite writers say is "impossible to be put down" and "superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining," and "Witty, vivid and harrowing ... as though Nora Ephron had written a book called 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.'"
And I was lucky enough to find a fantastic publisher, Mandel Vilar, co-publishing with Dryad Press. You can pre-order it at Bookstop.Org (to go indie) or at that other place. You can go to my website, and you can ask me for a review copy, if you're a reviewer. ElizabethBenedict.com
Thanks for reading so far. I am in your debt.
~~Liz Benedict
REWRITING ILLNESS: "A fine antidote to anodyne cancer accounts."
"A New York City cancer memoir informed by Susan Sontag and Nora Ephron.
KIRKUS REVIEWS March 8. Pub date May 23
"“I first read Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor in 1992,” writes Benedict, “curious about it as a writer and still an inhabitant of the kingdom of the well.” Sontag’s work, she writes, is “a touchstone, a learned investigation on a disease that’s still baffling, still killing.” Benedict chronicles many seemingly mundane activities that assumed greater resonance after her own diagnosis: visiting Zabar’s for chocolate babka when anxiety took away the ability to stomach anything else; picking up a puzzle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop before starting treatment at the facility that treated Ephron; taking a chemo-driven walk through Central Park in the middle of December. These and other aspects of the author’s cancer experience will be less relatable to readers who, for instance, cannot share their pathology report with a good friend who used to run a major New York City hospital.
Of course, illness is a great leveler, and privilege neither eliminates the fear of death nor guarantees a cure—though it may increase the chances. As Benedict shows, the “best” doctors still struggle with communication, and even the empowered can lose their voices in front of the lab coat. The author mostly resists the standard tropes of illness memoirs and compiles her thoughts not in chapters but brief episodes, which allows her to explore the range of her reactions to the disease she spent a life fearing. She invokes both the writing and silence of Sontag and Ephron—her cancer “support group”—and sometimes tamps down the emotional intensity of her experiences with analysis or humor. Throughout, there are a host of deeply moving moments— e.g., sharing her diagnosis with her adult stepdaughter or wrestling with the death of a close friend.
A fine antidote to anodyne cancer accounts.
KIRKUS REVIEWS March 8. Pub date May 23
"“I first read Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor in 1992,” writes Benedict, “curious about it as a writer and still an inhabitant of the kingdom of the well.” Sontag’s work, she writes, is “a touchstone, a learned investigation on a disease that’s still baffling, still killing.” Benedict chronicles many seemingly mundane activities that assumed greater resonance after her own diagnosis: visiting Zabar’s for chocolate babka when anxiety took away the ability to stomach anything else; picking up a puzzle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop before starting treatment at the facility that treated Ephron; taking a chemo-driven walk through Central Park in the middle of December. These and other aspects of the author’s cancer experience will be less relatable to readers who, for instance, cannot share their pathology report with a good friend who used to run a major New York City hospital.
Of course, illness is a great leveler, and privilege neither eliminates the fear of death nor guarantees a cure—though it may increase the chances. As Benedict shows, the “best” doctors still struggle with communication, and even the empowered can lose their voices in front of the lab coat. The author mostly resists the standard tropes of illness memoirs and compiles her thoughts not in chapters but brief episodes, which allows her to explore the range of her reactions to the disease she spent a life fearing. She invokes both the writing and silence of Sontag and Ephron—her cancer “support group”—and sometimes tamps down the emotional intensity of her experiences with analysis or humor. Throughout, there are a host of deeply moving moments— e.g., sharing her diagnosis with her adult stepdaughter or wrestling with the death of a close friend.
A fine antidote to anodyne cancer accounts.
Rewriting Illness: What People are Saying
I'm overjoyed by the responses from writers, therapists and other storytellers to my memoir, pub date May 23.
"In Rewriting Illness, Elizabeth Benedict isn't just rewriting the narrative she's given when she's diagnosed with cancer--she's gifting us her company, which I couldn't get enough of. With grace, wit, and refreshing candor, she turned her encounter with cancer into an intimate drama, a dark comedy, and a meditation on marriage, motherhood, friendship, secrets, fragility, and love, and in doing so, she asks us to pay attention to everything in our lives that really matters. When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience."
*** Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast
“Elizabeth Benedict’s book is brave, heartening and beautiful. We avert our eyes from the deep terror that she must face; she faces it and faces it down. This book is a lesson in how to live. Brava.”
*** Roxana Robinson, Sparta, Dawson’s Fall, Georgia O’Keefe: A Life.
“Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.”
*** Sigrid Nunez, author of What Are You Going Through and The Friend.
“Witty, vivid, harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped-time feeling when the flow of life—city life, complicated life, sentient life—collides with illness.”
*** Thomas Beller, Author of J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist and Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball
“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict … writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.”
*** Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life
"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club…
*** Betsy West, Documentary director (RBG, JULIA, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)
"In Rewriting Illness, Elizabeth Benedict isn't just rewriting the narrative she's given when she's diagnosed with cancer--she's gifting us her company, which I couldn't get enough of. With grace, wit, and refreshing candor, she turned her encounter with cancer into an intimate drama, a dark comedy, and a meditation on marriage, motherhood, friendship, secrets, fragility, and love, and in doing so, she asks us to pay attention to everything in our lives that really matters. When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience."
*** Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast
“Elizabeth Benedict’s book is brave, heartening and beautiful. We avert our eyes from the deep terror that she must face; she faces it and faces it down. This book is a lesson in how to live. Brava.”
*** Roxana Robinson, Sparta, Dawson’s Fall, Georgia O’Keefe: A Life.
“Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.”
*** Sigrid Nunez, author of What Are You Going Through and The Friend.
“Witty, vivid, harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped-time feeling when the flow of life—city life, complicated life, sentient life—collides with illness.”
*** Thomas Beller, Author of J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist and Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball
“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict … writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.”
*** Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life
"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club…
*** Betsy West, Documentary director (RBG, JULIA, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)
Rewriting Illness Goodreads Giveaway
You can't win if you don't play. Sign up now for the REWRITING ILLNESS Giveaway.
Why read it? Bec Sigrid Nunez said: "Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner…” Thomas Beller: "Witty, vivid and harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.'" A Harvard medical school prof: "Should be required reading for med students, residents and physicians."
ENTER HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Why read it? Bec Sigrid Nunez said: "Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner…” Thomas Beller: "Witty, vivid and harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called 'I Feel Bad About My Tumor.'" A Harvard medical school prof: "Should be required reading for med students, residents and physicians."
ENTER HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Take a Cancer Memoir & Make it Different
How do we learn to write? By reading and by trial and error. By putting ourselves and our work out there -- and taking criticism from friends, strangers, and loved ones.
When I knew I wanted to write about my harrowing encounter with the medical world and with cancer, the project wasn't easy, even though I've written 10 or 11 books, depending on how you count.
But how to bring something new to a familiar, even clichéd, story?
I didn't join a support group, but I relied on the work of other writers who'd been through the experience: Nora Ephron, Jenny Diski, and Susan Sontag.
My new essay in THE MILLIONS is about how I came to write REWRITING ILLNESS: A VIEW OF MY OWN.
Readers have said it's good advice for all kinds of memoirs. I hope you'll read it and let me know what you think!
"Two distinct voices warred as I wrote and rewrote. My friend’s Kate’s: “You have to do this. It will be so helpful to people going through what you went through.” And my friend Bob’s: “I never want to read another cancer memoir!”
READ THE REST: https://tinyurl.com/bp992y6v
When I knew I wanted to write about my harrowing encounter with the medical world and with cancer, the project wasn't easy, even though I've written 10 or 11 books, depending on how you count.
But how to bring something new to a familiar, even clichéd, story?
I didn't join a support group, but I relied on the work of other writers who'd been through the experience: Nora Ephron, Jenny Diski, and Susan Sontag.
My new essay in THE MILLIONS is about how I came to write REWRITING ILLNESS: A VIEW OF MY OWN.
Readers have said it's good advice for all kinds of memoirs. I hope you'll read it and let me know what you think!
"Two distinct voices warred as I wrote and rewrote. My friend’s Kate’s: “You have to do this. It will be so helpful to people going through what you went through.” And my friend Bob’s: “I never want to read another cancer memoir!”
READ THE REST: https://tinyurl.com/bp992y6v
BOSTON GLOBE LOVES REWRITING ILLNSES!
Elizabeth Benedict’s ‘Rewriting Illness’ injects tragicomedy into a personal account of cancer diagnosis and treatment
By Joan Frank Globe Correspondent May 11, 2023,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/1...
Rewriting Illness,” Elizabeth Benedict’s eighth book, will mess with you — in irresistible ways. Despite its scary subject, this chronicle reads more like a breathtaking whodunnit — or rather, a whatdunnit. It may actually help readers feel better about our own natural fears, even while it confronts the worst.
Best of all, Benedict’s writing sparkles.
It’s only fitting. A novelist and essayist who teaches fiction and coaches students on their college application essays, Benedict whips language around like a gunslinger. Her account arrives in crisp, wry bites that also manage to be wittily titled: “Not Everything Scares the S—t out of Me” or “One Night I Touched My Arm.”
Advertisement
Hypochondriacs and catastrophists? She’s got your backs, opening with the moment her own lifelong, free-range hypochondria probably began — when a sweet high school classmate suddenly died of Hodgkin’s disease. That shock stuck. “I had barely known the girl. ... yet she had lurked in my consciousness ... prepared to pounce and shout ... ’Now it’s your turn!’”
And lo: “[L]ate one night in early June 2017... I crossed my left arm over my chest and stuck it in my armpit, and there it was.” A lump. Also a “vague sensation,”as if that of “a tiny pellet floating inside me.”
It takes not one nanosecond (especially for women) to grasp: this could be me. Moreover, our paranoia’s justified. “If I added up the hours I had spent anticipating the moment I’d feel a lump where no lump should be ... I knew my own fears were extreme.” Benedict also allows that the dreaded moment “turns out to be every bit as terrifying” as she’d imagined.
By Joan Frank Globe Correspondent May 11, 2023,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/1...
Rewriting Illness,” Elizabeth Benedict’s eighth book, will mess with you — in irresistible ways. Despite its scary subject, this chronicle reads more like a breathtaking whodunnit — or rather, a whatdunnit. It may actually help readers feel better about our own natural fears, even while it confronts the worst.
Best of all, Benedict’s writing sparkles.
It’s only fitting. A novelist and essayist who teaches fiction and coaches students on their college application essays, Benedict whips language around like a gunslinger. Her account arrives in crisp, wry bites that also manage to be wittily titled: “Not Everything Scares the S—t out of Me” or “One Night I Touched My Arm.”
Advertisement
Hypochondriacs and catastrophists? She’s got your backs, opening with the moment her own lifelong, free-range hypochondria probably began — when a sweet high school classmate suddenly died of Hodgkin’s disease. That shock stuck. “I had barely known the girl. ... yet she had lurked in my consciousness ... prepared to pounce and shout ... ’Now it’s your turn!’”
And lo: “[L]ate one night in early June 2017... I crossed my left arm over my chest and stuck it in my armpit, and there it was.” A lump. Also a “vague sensation,”as if that of “a tiny pellet floating inside me.”
It takes not one nanosecond (especially for women) to grasp: this could be me. Moreover, our paranoia’s justified. “If I added up the hours I had spent anticipating the moment I’d feel a lump where no lump should be ... I knew my own fears were extreme.” Benedict also allows that the dreaded moment “turns out to be every bit as terrifying” as she’d imagined.
HOPEFUL ... BEST ... SURVIVORS
This letter just arrived from a reader of REWRITING ILLNESS:
"This is the best and most hopeful book for anxious cancer survivors--which is pretty much everyone I know! I will be recommending to the gang in my Wednesday night [support] group."
Want an audiobook? Listen to me read the story -- 6 hours and 12 minutes -- on Audible. Or read it on your screen or in your lap.
Coming soon to a book group near you.
https://www.elizabethbenedict.com
"This is the best and most hopeful book for anxious cancer survivors--which is pretty much everyone I know! I will be recommending to the gang in my Wednesday night [support] group."
Want an audiobook? Listen to me read the story -- 6 hours and 12 minutes -- on Audible. Or read it on your screen or in your lap.
Coming soon to a book group near you.
https://www.elizabethbenedict.com
