Absence: A Metaphysical Comedy

by Raymond Tallis

"Absence" sees the National Health Service through the eyes of Nick Page, a young doctor in free fall into despair. Beneath the comic surface is a serious investigation into human nature -- its desires, its prejudices, its unhappiness -- and the various absences that haunt and intoxicate it.It is a rare book which combines real humour with sustained intellectual inquiry.

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 1999

About the author

Professor Raymond Tallis is a philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic and was until recently a physician and clinical scientist. In the Economist's Intelligent Life Magazine (Autumn 2009) he was listed as one of the top living polymaths in the world.

Born in Liverpool in 1946, one of five children, he trained as a doctor at Oxford University and at St Thomas' in London before going on to become Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford. Professor Tallis retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer, though he remained Visiting Professor at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London until 2008.

Prior to his retirement from medicine to devote himself to writing, Raymond Tallis had responsibility for acute and rehabilitation patients and took part in the on-call rota for acute medical emergencies. He also ran a unique specialist epilepsy service for older people. Amongst his 200 or so medical publications are two major textbooks - The Clinical Neurology of Old Age (Wiley, 1988) and the comprehensive Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (Harcourt Brace, co-edited with Howard Fillitt, 6th edition, 2003). Most of his research publications were in the field of neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation. He has published original articles in Nature Medicine, Lancet and other leading journals. Two of his papers were the subject of leading articles in Lancet. In 2000 Raymond Tallis was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in recognition of his contribution to medical research; in 2002 he was awarded the Dhole Eddlestone Prize for his contribution to the medical literature on elderly people; and in 2006 he received the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society. In July 2007, he received the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing, and in November 2011 he was honoured with the International League Against Epilepsy's Special Excellence in Epilepsy Award. He is a Patron of Dignity in Dying.

Over the last 20 years Raymond Tallis has published fiction, three volumes of poetry, and 23 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art and cultural criticism. Together with over two hundred articles in Prospect, Times Literary Supplement and many other outlets, these books offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this work, Professor Tallis has been awarded three honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon. Causa) from the University of Hull in 1997; LittD (Hon. Causa) at the University of Manchester 2002 and Doc (Med) SC, St George's Hospital 2015. He was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Liverpool until 2013.

Raymond Tallis makes regular appearances at Hay, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and other book festivals, and lectures widely.

Raymond Tallis's national roles have included: Consultant Advisor in Health Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer; a key part in developing National Service Framework for Older People, in particular the recommendations of developing services for people with strokes; membership of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence Appraisal Committee; Chairmanship of the Royal College of Physicians Committee on Ethics in Medicine; Chairman of the committee reviewing ethics support for front-line clinicians; and membership of the Working Party producing a seminal report Doctors in Society, Medical Professionalism in a Changing World (2005). From July 2011 to October 2014 he was the elected Chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD).

In 2012 he was a member of the judges' panel for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

In 2015 he judged the Notting Hill Essay prize.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Remember Crispin Glover?
Sure you do. The dad from Back to the Future -- George McFly! Ayyyy childhood. Well, did you know that currently, in between sporadic acting jobs, he makes films? Oh yeah. And he tours them, okay, he brings them to university libraries and bars for your viewing pleasure. Cool, right?

Okay so my sister and I, a few weeks ago, went to one of these viewings. Very exciting; we always liked Crispy G. We sat down, vaguely noting that the audience was about one part female, seventeen parts white Gen X dude, 100% university educated and likely in the arts. No problem. We settle in.

And to introduce the movie, Crispin Glover stepped out from the curtains on the side of the stage, behind which he'd been quietly hiding for at least half an hour. We laughed. He didn't.


Guys if I could explain what happened that evening...I mean let me try because this review hinges on it....soooo:

The movie itself is titled "What Is It?", and if you Google it, the description is "A young man journeys through a bizarre land inhabited by mentally impaired people, and snails." Verbatim. Which I mean sets you up pretty well maybe. Like I guess it discounts the massively offensive racism and misogyny and ableism that is intentionally gaslighted, as well as Fairuza Balk's piercing snail screams. We didn't have a description going in though so our experience was more like:
"What...the fuck? Why are so many snails being brutally murdered on camera? Why are there so many swastikas? Why does every actor have Down's syndrome except Crispin Glover? Is he...wait, is he trying to SAY something with this?! Is this hodgepodge of complete shock-value nonsense supposed to have some kind of message?? Oh god it is isn't it. Oh no."

When it finished, thus began one of the absolute strangest Q&A experiences I've witnessed in my life. Essentially, Glover was arguing that "corporate cinema" has destroyed everything possible in art. Please set aside that this was a relevant concern back in the year 1999 and that now, in 2017, both media and film schools are implicitly aware of this issue. That doesn't matter because Crispin Glover is clearly stuck in the rich white LA boy issues of the end of the 20th century. "You can't know my genius," he cried, not in so many words, to an audience that was half-drooling, half-baffled. You're right, buddy -- cause it ain't genius. It's just you thinking, "How can I most SHOCK my audience?" and passing it off as "I just want people to question things!"

Things derailed. Glover spent about half an hour asking one woman to define her terms: "But listen to what I'm saying. I didn't say 'fetishizing.' What do you mean by that? Is it just that you're uncomfortable?" No, dickwad. We got what you were doing. Doesn't make it intelligent. Other highlights included a twenty-minute rambling lecture on surrealism, Glover repeating that he'd written 400 pages of a book, and that horrible feeling you get when you're surrounded by a bunch of pedantic assholes who blindly agree with whatever bullshit's being spouted by the guy at the front of the room.

It was a train wreck.

No one learned anything.

The balding Gen X film-studies white guys chortled and snortled at Glover's crap. The people with the audacity to criticize any aspect were belittled & told they couldn't understand his very deep purpose of, you know, calling out those studios that were mean to him. Everyone left irritated except Crispin Glover, who was full of self-important pride as he retreated, again, behind the curtains.


Long story short:

Reading Absence made me feel like Crispin Glover's army was trying, and failing, to be smart and funny, and when I didn't "get it," well, that wasn't their fault.

Hard pass.

[Cheryl Andrews]

I tried. For 24 agonizing pages, I tried to read this book and finally gave up. Some people speak as if they are trying to swallow their tongues, Raymond Tallis writes this way!

[JimZ]

I unfortunately did not write down when I read this book. However, it appears I did no tlike it because I wrote this in a note in the book, "very pretentious!"

I must have either bought this at The Strand, one of my favorite book shoppes of all time, or I ordered it from there.

[Red Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me this was one of those works of fiction that alternated between pretty standard writing to really insightful portions. Main character is a love-struck young doctor.

"It would be an exaggeration to say that Nick went mad. Those who are unused to suffering are prone to overestimate the place of their own on the scale of human woe."

".. But already the train is slowing to a halt and Nick is waking up. He is feeling, as one does after a drunken doze on a train, as if meaning has drained from the face of the universe. This will not stop him talking of course. The end of meaning will merely provide the occasion for more words - dead messengers still running with the news from the Battle of Marathon."