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Pain Studies
"A fascinating, totally seductive read!" —Eula Biss, author of Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays and On Immunity: An Inoculation
"A book built of brain and nerve and blood and heart. . . . Irreverent and astute. . . . Pain Studies will change how you think about living with a body." —Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck and Bowlaway
"A thrilling investigation into pain, language, and Olstein's own exile from what Woolf called 'the army of the upright.' On a search path through art, science, poetry, and prime-time television, Olstein aims her knife-bright compassion at the very thing we're all running from. Pain Studies is a masterpiece." —Leni Zumas, author of The Listeners and Red Clocks
In this extended lyric essay, a poet mines her lifelong experience with migraine 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.
Lisa Olstein teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of four poetry collections published by Copper Canyon Press. Pain Studies is her first book of creative nonfiction.
"A book built of brain and nerve and blood and heart. . . . Irreverent and astute. . . . Pain Studies will change how you think about living with a body." —Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck and Bowlaway
"A thrilling investigation into pain, language, and Olstein's own exile from what Woolf called 'the army of the upright.' On a search path through art, science, poetry, and prime-time television, Olstein aims her knife-bright compassion at the very thing we're all running from. Pain Studies is a masterpiece." —Leni Zumas, author of The Listeners and Red Clocks
In this extended lyric essay, a poet mines her lifelong experience with migraine 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.
Lisa Olstein teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of four poetry collections published by Copper Canyon Press. Pain Studies is her first book of creative nonfiction.
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 4, 2020
33 people are currently reading
445 people want to read
About the author
Lisa Olstein
12 books16 followersLisa Olstein was born and raised near Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, undertaking additional studies at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts and Harvard Divinity School. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is co-founder of the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action and a contributing editor of jubilat.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
October 15, 2020
This is a book of creative nonfiction in the vein of Sarah Manguso, focussing pain in general and migraine in particular – and as such I was just the right reader for this. I like this kind of nonfiction that jumps from topic to topic, organized in short, punchy essays. Olstein looks at philosophical thought on pain, on its depiction in pop culture (especially in House, M. D.), there is a part dedicated to Joan of Arc, and so much more. I love this jumping around and connecting different train of thoughts to a more or less coherent whole, so for me this absolutely worked. I did think that sometimes this connecting could have been done a little bit more explicitly, but I did like having to close some gaps myself. For me the descriptions of migraine really resonated but I am unsure how the book reads for somebody who does not know the weird state of being a strong migraine with an aura invokes.
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
October 2, 2019
3.5 stars. What I like most about this book is Olstein's sincerity, her analysis of House MD, and her inclusion of Lucretius's concept of clinamen, or swerve. Pain Studies certainly swerves, but sometimes without any sort of definitive direction, it seems. The book's structure could've been a bit tighter without compromising the way it zigzags between topics. For instance, the chapters on Joan of Arc are captivating, but feel mostly tangential to Olstein's exploration of pain, aside from one or two chapters that vaguely gesture to a more explicit connection between the two. Also, the sort of microburst chapters quicken the reading experience, but leave something to be desired in terms of content. At times, the brevity of these chapters hurries the reader to the surface of what's being said without piercing through it.
(Note: I'm an independent bookseller and received an ARC of this book at work.)
(Note: I'm an independent bookseller and received an ARC of this book at work.)
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March 8, 2020Fans of Anne Carson, Joan Didion, Maggie Nelson, & Sarah Manguso have this to rejoice in. Only a poet could have written a book with such awareness, perception, and craft.
July 3, 2020
Pain Studies is a lovely, thoughtful collection of lyric essays that explore the intersection between pain, language, and perception. Olstein writes about our inability to express pain. She says, "[e]xiled from the kingdom of health, the ill inherit a different land. What is shattered here? Language or the perceived world language describes?" But all is not lost. Language and/or perception is shattered, yes, but Olstein offers an alternative: "What if alongside destruction, there is creation? Aren't shards the material of mosaics? That is, what if instead of prelanguage, pain is extralanguage: outside the norms by which dominant modes of language typically order and mean? Might this outsideness encompass resistance (genius-rage) and untranslatability (unbridgeable divide), alongside the possibility—even the necessity—of invention?" As a writer and migraine sufferer myself, I found this book incredibly moving—a beautiful mosaic of pain and hope.
October 18, 2020
Unfortunately this book really didn't work for me. I ended up getting lost in the run on sentences, the excessive adjectives, the indirect comparisons, and the seemingly random connections between one chapter and the next. The jumping around made it feel incoherent for me.
I really appreciated the little she had to say about denial and her question of whether it leads to "breakdown" instead of "breaking down" and whether denial "makes a refusal of paralysis possible." I would have loved to hear more about that.
In the end, I was put off by what felt like disdain for other people living with chronic pain/illness. At one point she says "I found in the sick no viable model [for life/living]," um ok? And that her denial and compartmentalization as a means of coping allowed her to have a life that isn't oriented around migrane, "in other words, a life." Again WTF?
I really appreciated the little she had to say about denial and her question of whether it leads to "breakdown" instead of "breaking down" and whether denial "makes a refusal of paralysis possible." I would have loved to hear more about that.
In the end, I was put off by what felt like disdain for other people living with chronic pain/illness. At one point she says "I found in the sick no viable model [for life/living]," um ok? And that her denial and compartmentalization as a means of coping allowed her to have a life that isn't oriented around migrane, "in other words, a life." Again WTF?
Read
January 9, 2020A thoughtful meditation on the nature of pain, especially chronic pain and migraine, and history's treatment of pain in literature and culture, written by a poet. I do wish I had seen more of her poetry on pain, rather than historical dives, but this book is worth it for her comparison of a seaman's scale of rising wind descriptions to a mounting migraine, alone. I felt very seen.
July 2, 2021
Lisa Olstein is a poet and suffers from migraines. In Pain Studies, these two facets of her identity combine to create a study of pain by way of the artist. I have very mixed feelings regarding this text so I'll start with what I didn't enjoy, and then go into a discussion of what I did like/her general ideas regarding pain.
So first, this book was way more theoretical than I expected so I had to adjust myself to that almost immediately. In this way, I think that Olstein did us (or maybe just me) a disservice. As someone with chronic pain who is also a writer, Olstein had a unique opportunity to communicate the experience of pain in a way that could broaden minds and reduce stigma -- and I think she fell short of that. What could have been an informative practical discussion instead veered into the realm of theory. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some theory. But there is such a pressing need (in my head at least) for almost a how-to guide to addressing pain in others that that's what I really craved. To add insult to injury, she even jokes about how she and a friend were discussing an idea for this very thing: An Incomplete Field Guide to Accompanying the Visibly and Invisibly Wounded. This is what I wanted and, to my chagrin, this text was something else. In terms of textual structure, I also had some beef. Olstein writes in very brief chapters which renders the reading relatively fast paced. Now this in itself is not an issue; the issue lies in how the chapters are broken. She breaks her Joan of Arc discussion along lines that don't seem to make sense. In my head, chapters tackle distinct topics, so when I start a new chapter only to realize we're still talking about what we were in the last chapter, my brain has to readjust and this makes the reading choppy. Realistically, these two things (the theoretical nature and the odd chapter delineations) are my only complaints but I'll admit that they had a significant impact on my reading. However, now I'll shift gears into my attempt at a summary of Olstein's theory of pain.
Olstein begins with the idea of chaos as outlined by Lucretius' concept of clinamen. Clinamen is an early metaphysical idea that posits atoms as falling like a rain, never touching, until one atom unpredictably swerves and collides into another. This collision leads to creation as we know it. Now think of the normal, Olstein's "habitual choreographies" as the constant rain of atoms. This is the model for the functioning body as seen by medicine as well, business as usual. Until, kablam!, an atom swerves; this is pain. Pain, for Olstein, is a chaos state derived from the traditional, "procedural" state of things. Her pain is specifically from migraines and so throughout the book she uses 'pain' and 'migraine' almost interchangeably. So here we are, pain/migraine pain as a state of chaos that deviates from the business-as-usual state of the body.
The next move she makes is to talk about how pain and the experience of pain is extralinguistic. Using a critique of an essay by Elaine Scarry as well as a list of her own symptoms, Olstein shows how the language we normally use doesn't suffice to describe pain. Scarry describes the logic used by physicians to address pain, breaking down the phenomenon into parts. These parts describe the time scale of pain (words like 'throbbing'), a temperature scale (words like 'burning'), and a pressure scale (words like 'pinching'). It's words like these that are the basis of things like a 1-10 pain scale. But everyone knows these scales aren't helpful, Olstein says this is because they weren't written by someone in pain. This implies that there's some subversive language accessible only to those suffering. Olstein says that a scale used to measure sea calmness, the Beaufort Wind Scale, is actually more aligned with the experience of pain. Clearly the language we have for pain is inadequate. This point is further proven by Olstein's listing of her own symptoms, which often contradict each other: difficulty reading and heightened reading acuity; appetite stimulation and appetite suppression; blurred vision and hyperacuity of vision. Here we begin to see the rain drops that are normally separate, collide.
How do we access this "extralanguage" if we are not in pain? Olstein proposes thinking about it like a photo negative: "It's remarkable how much primary knowledge we glean from secondary arguments against it -- a kind of negative proof -- and from the procedural mechanisms intended to stamp it out." In trying to pin down what pain is, we learn the equally valuable truth about what pain is not ("Horse, then, unhorses"). She draws an admittedly odd parallel to the trial of Joan of Arc. Joan claimed to be told by God to lead soldiers to victory in the Hundred Years War which she did, dressed scandalously as a man. Trying to understand this divine intervention, the court asks her questions, and in these questions (and Joan's response to them) we can paint a picture of her experience, albeit a negative one. In this way, pain seems ontologically nihilistic. We understand its being by understanding what it isn't, again implying that our known procedures and scales for sussing out physical dysfunction will not suffice.
Her next step after pointing out that language is not a good vehicle for pain description is to turn her attention to art. She is an artist after all. Her first example is a collection of sculptures by Donald Judd. Each work is an aluminum box with the same external dimensions, but the internal characteristics are all different across the 100 works in the collection. Infinities contained within a "finity". Olstein says "Art/migraine disrupts habitual choreographies, it reorganizes us, it reorganizes time." For Olstein, art (specifically Judd's art) and its habit of disrupting habits and expectations is closer to a language of pain than our own language it. It's not her "negative proof", this is firsthand. The fact that we struggle to interpret it interestingly may prove her point. She uses another example, James Turrel's Skyspace, as a way to further this analogy. Here, one views the sky through an oculus that is light by changing light. As the light changes, the perception of the dusk/night/dawn sky is altered. This is a biological phenomenon. And yet the way her and her students describe what they see varies immensely. Here again Olstein is showing how art may be a linguistic alternative for the experience of pain.
Along with the art metaphor, Olstein makes an interesting move bringing in a phenomenon in neuroscience known as prediction-error signal. This occurs when the brain is expecting something that doesn't happen. Most commonly, this is understood in terms of behavioral training. If you're trying to catch a ball and you miss, the brain creates a prediction-error signal so that next time, you'll adjust your hand position. Simplified, but that's the idea. Olstein says the presence of pain in the clinic is like this, a signal of something unexpected. However, we can decide what happens next. As a doctor, we can be frustrated by unexplained pain or we can be motivated. As a sufferer, we can succumb or we can fight. At the end of Olstein's meditations there is a distinct hint of hope in the face of chaos.
Generally, what I found impressive about these essays was how Olstein integrates various forms of media and culture into attempting to describe her pain. She references the TV show House M.D., she utilizes the trial of Joan of Arc, she examines sculpture, she reads Virginia Woolf, she analyzes plays, she incorporates biological science. This type of writing is what I love and is very 'in' right now. The idea that answers to the questions we have about the world manifest in every aspect of our life. Think of the excitement when you read that Euler's number, the golden ratio, a seemingly random 2.718281828..... appears in wildly disparate parts of nature. The human and the nautilus shell, linked by a single number. While the idea of grand narratives like this are decidedly anti-postmodern, they're a hell of a time to read about.
Overall, I think if you go into this knowing it will be abstract it will increase your appreciation for the text. Olstein is clearly a poet in spite of her prose. Her mind is intriguing, captivating, and hard to interpret; just like pain.
So first, this book was way more theoretical than I expected so I had to adjust myself to that almost immediately. In this way, I think that Olstein did us (or maybe just me) a disservice. As someone with chronic pain who is also a writer, Olstein had a unique opportunity to communicate the experience of pain in a way that could broaden minds and reduce stigma -- and I think she fell short of that. What could have been an informative practical discussion instead veered into the realm of theory. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some theory. But there is such a pressing need (in my head at least) for almost a how-to guide to addressing pain in others that that's what I really craved. To add insult to injury, she even jokes about how she and a friend were discussing an idea for this very thing: An Incomplete Field Guide to Accompanying the Visibly and Invisibly Wounded. This is what I wanted and, to my chagrin, this text was something else. In terms of textual structure, I also had some beef. Olstein writes in very brief chapters which renders the reading relatively fast paced. Now this in itself is not an issue; the issue lies in how the chapters are broken. She breaks her Joan of Arc discussion along lines that don't seem to make sense. In my head, chapters tackle distinct topics, so when I start a new chapter only to realize we're still talking about what we were in the last chapter, my brain has to readjust and this makes the reading choppy. Realistically, these two things (the theoretical nature and the odd chapter delineations) are my only complaints but I'll admit that they had a significant impact on my reading. However, now I'll shift gears into my attempt at a summary of Olstein's theory of pain.
Olstein begins with the idea of chaos as outlined by Lucretius' concept of clinamen. Clinamen is an early metaphysical idea that posits atoms as falling like a rain, never touching, until one atom unpredictably swerves and collides into another. This collision leads to creation as we know it. Now think of the normal, Olstein's "habitual choreographies" as the constant rain of atoms. This is the model for the functioning body as seen by medicine as well, business as usual. Until, kablam!, an atom swerves; this is pain. Pain, for Olstein, is a chaos state derived from the traditional, "procedural" state of things. Her pain is specifically from migraines and so throughout the book she uses 'pain' and 'migraine' almost interchangeably. So here we are, pain/migraine pain as a state of chaos that deviates from the business-as-usual state of the body.
The next move she makes is to talk about how pain and the experience of pain is extralinguistic. Using a critique of an essay by Elaine Scarry as well as a list of her own symptoms, Olstein shows how the language we normally use doesn't suffice to describe pain. Scarry describes the logic used by physicians to address pain, breaking down the phenomenon into parts. These parts describe the time scale of pain (words like 'throbbing'), a temperature scale (words like 'burning'), and a pressure scale (words like 'pinching'). It's words like these that are the basis of things like a 1-10 pain scale. But everyone knows these scales aren't helpful, Olstein says this is because they weren't written by someone in pain. This implies that there's some subversive language accessible only to those suffering. Olstein says that a scale used to measure sea calmness, the Beaufort Wind Scale, is actually more aligned with the experience of pain. Clearly the language we have for pain is inadequate. This point is further proven by Olstein's listing of her own symptoms, which often contradict each other: difficulty reading and heightened reading acuity; appetite stimulation and appetite suppression; blurred vision and hyperacuity of vision. Here we begin to see the rain drops that are normally separate, collide.
How do we access this "extralanguage" if we are not in pain? Olstein proposes thinking about it like a photo negative: "It's remarkable how much primary knowledge we glean from secondary arguments against it -- a kind of negative proof -- and from the procedural mechanisms intended to stamp it out." In trying to pin down what pain is, we learn the equally valuable truth about what pain is not ("Horse, then, unhorses"). She draws an admittedly odd parallel to the trial of Joan of Arc. Joan claimed to be told by God to lead soldiers to victory in the Hundred Years War which she did, dressed scandalously as a man. Trying to understand this divine intervention, the court asks her questions, and in these questions (and Joan's response to them) we can paint a picture of her experience, albeit a negative one. In this way, pain seems ontologically nihilistic. We understand its being by understanding what it isn't, again implying that our known procedures and scales for sussing out physical dysfunction will not suffice.
Her next step after pointing out that language is not a good vehicle for pain description is to turn her attention to art. She is an artist after all. Her first example is a collection of sculptures by Donald Judd. Each work is an aluminum box with the same external dimensions, but the internal characteristics are all different across the 100 works in the collection. Infinities contained within a "finity". Olstein says "Art/migraine disrupts habitual choreographies, it reorganizes us, it reorganizes time." For Olstein, art (specifically Judd's art) and its habit of disrupting habits and expectations is closer to a language of pain than our own language it. It's not her "negative proof", this is firsthand. The fact that we struggle to interpret it interestingly may prove her point. She uses another example, James Turrel's Skyspace, as a way to further this analogy. Here, one views the sky through an oculus that is light by changing light. As the light changes, the perception of the dusk/night/dawn sky is altered. This is a biological phenomenon. And yet the way her and her students describe what they see varies immensely. Here again Olstein is showing how art may be a linguistic alternative for the experience of pain.
Along with the art metaphor, Olstein makes an interesting move bringing in a phenomenon in neuroscience known as prediction-error signal. This occurs when the brain is expecting something that doesn't happen. Most commonly, this is understood in terms of behavioral training. If you're trying to catch a ball and you miss, the brain creates a prediction-error signal so that next time, you'll adjust your hand position. Simplified, but that's the idea. Olstein says the presence of pain in the clinic is like this, a signal of something unexpected. However, we can decide what happens next. As a doctor, we can be frustrated by unexplained pain or we can be motivated. As a sufferer, we can succumb or we can fight. At the end of Olstein's meditations there is a distinct hint of hope in the face of chaos.
Generally, what I found impressive about these essays was how Olstein integrates various forms of media and culture into attempting to describe her pain. She references the TV show House M.D., she utilizes the trial of Joan of Arc, she examines sculpture, she reads Virginia Woolf, she analyzes plays, she incorporates biological science. This type of writing is what I love and is very 'in' right now. The idea that answers to the questions we have about the world manifest in every aspect of our life. Think of the excitement when you read that Euler's number, the golden ratio, a seemingly random 2.718281828..... appears in wildly disparate parts of nature. The human and the nautilus shell, linked by a single number. While the idea of grand narratives like this are decidedly anti-postmodern, they're a hell of a time to read about.
Overall, I think if you go into this knowing it will be abstract it will increase your appreciation for the text. Olstein is clearly a poet in spite of her prose. Her mind is intriguing, captivating, and hard to interpret; just like pain.
May 1, 2020
First off, I received a copy of this book through the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing. I'm grateful to the publisher for the copy of this; I read an ARC, and so some aspects may have changed in the course of publishing.
This book interesting series of meditations on migraine and pain. Olstein draws cultural objects from all over--poets and writers, House, M.D., art, etc. I think some of her interactions with those objects falls kind of short for me--the book itself is not, obviously, a true cultural history in the academic sense of migraine, but it feels a little pulled thin as she tries to create essentially migraine as a kind of epistemology but never really coming to any real stance on it, which is fine since that's not necessarily her aim.
The biggest weakness of the text for me is the lack of engagement with disability studies, or the question of disability at all. I'm not sure if Olstein considers herself disabled, and she seems resistant to considering the question in any serious capacity, preferring to take the pain as its own thing. I just think addressing some of the questions that disability studies has posed about pain (I'm thinking especially the work of Tobin Siebers in Disability Theory around pain, which touches on much of what Olstein writes about here but also extends beyond it in ways I find productive,) or at least acknowledging that thought might really have enriched this.
This book interesting series of meditations on migraine and pain. Olstein draws cultural objects from all over--poets and writers, House, M.D., art, etc. I think some of her interactions with those objects falls kind of short for me--the book itself is not, obviously, a true cultural history in the academic sense of migraine, but it feels a little pulled thin as she tries to create essentially migraine as a kind of epistemology but never really coming to any real stance on it, which is fine since that's not necessarily her aim.
The biggest weakness of the text for me is the lack of engagement with disability studies, or the question of disability at all. I'm not sure if Olstein considers herself disabled, and she seems resistant to considering the question in any serious capacity, preferring to take the pain as its own thing. I just think addressing some of the questions that disability studies has posed about pain (I'm thinking especially the work of Tobin Siebers in Disability Theory around pain, which touches on much of what Olstein writes about here but also extends beyond it in ways I find productive,) or at least acknowledging that thought might really have enriched this.
April 24, 2020
Wow, I breezed through this one and even during a migraine! When you've had to live with chronic pain for some time, reading books about pain can be cathartic. There's the feeling or being not alone. And that's important.
This book in particular had a great balance between life experience, history, and philosophy while also repeatedly noting that personal psychology (aka perspective) is the most important tool one can have when attempting to abide and conquer the perpetual ills of chronic pain.
I loved this read and I could see this book being twice the size and just as great.
My own personal migraine journey is also complicated but I have found that my current favorite tools for handling my pain are cbd oil, magnesium supplements, and not attempting to rock the boat with an endless well of very dangerous miracle cures. The less I think about trying to change myself the easier the pain tends to be to handle. I do have less pain since I stopped having so many stressful doctor visits. But of course, some episodes are far worse than others and keeping a positive mindset is 100% impossible all of the time. To quote The Princess Bride: "Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
Humor and perspective are very important tools to have when one deals with chronic illness and bouts of hardship. And there's nothing better to distract the mind from pain than a study on varying perspectives on pain.
This book in particular had a great balance between life experience, history, and philosophy while also repeatedly noting that personal psychology (aka perspective) is the most important tool one can have when attempting to abide and conquer the perpetual ills of chronic pain.
I loved this read and I could see this book being twice the size and just as great.
My own personal migraine journey is also complicated but I have found that my current favorite tools for handling my pain are cbd oil, magnesium supplements, and not attempting to rock the boat with an endless well of very dangerous miracle cures. The less I think about trying to change myself the easier the pain tends to be to handle. I do have less pain since I stopped having so many stressful doctor visits. But of course, some episodes are far worse than others and keeping a positive mindset is 100% impossible all of the time. To quote The Princess Bride: "Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
Humor and perspective are very important tools to have when one deals with chronic illness and bouts of hardship. And there's nothing better to distract the mind from pain than a study on varying perspectives on pain.
October 30, 2025
Read this while suffering from a migraine (lol), so maybe my brain was just too mush to fully appreciate it. I did love the House MD references, though.
January 12, 2024
This slim volume of meditative essays on pain, specifically migraine pain, gave me many exquisite shocks of something like relief of recognition as I read. I frequently interrupted my reading to share passages with my spouse (who also suffers from migraine, though his are, as Olstein's mother says to her "nothing like what you have". Olstein's mother also tells her in their phone conversations, as my own mother used to, that she "would take it from you if I could.") Olstein offers many lists throughout Pain Studies, beginning with the descriptions that go with the 0-12 numbering of the Beaufort Wind Scale which, as she says, "read eerily like a mounting migraine." She compiles the number of days, months, years (9.5) she has spent in migraine pain - prompting me to undertake a similar rough accounting and arrive at a similar appalling number. A list of medications and alternative therapies tried; a list of non-pain migraine effects - these, too, I have made in the past.
These lists (and others) however illuminating and disturbing, are not (or not by themselves alone) what make this book so extraordinary. Olstein says, "...uninterested in personal revelation, unwilling to yield even more precious time and attention, and inchoately flustered or dismayed by nearly everything I read on the subject [of migraine], I've avoided it. For years, my policy was a kind of zero tolerance vigilantly pursued: Give the monster nothing, not one minute more than what by stealth or by force it took. Accommodate what must be accommodated, but volunteer for nothing: not support group esprit de corps, not even, really, a moment's reflection. Another form of magical thinking, a felt superstition: don't let the gods mistake your intent. So why am I writing this?" And why are we (migraineurs) reading this?
The exquisite shock, the relief of recognition, is, for me, the pleasure of someone having created a document that in both form and content communicates the nature of living with/in migraine, which is something that is close to impossible to communicate.
Communicates it to people with migraine; I don't know what the reading experience would be like for someone without migraine (or some other form of chronic pain). Possibly some caregivers, who often learn over time to attend closely to every aspect of a chronic migraineur's existence, would also felt spoken to.
This is not a book about How To Live With Migraine or How to Improve Your Migraine Condition; it is not a historical or cultural survey of migraine (though Olstein draws on those elements. It won't make your migraine disease better (or worse) to read it, but for me, it's definitely better to have had this book to read.
These lists (and others) however illuminating and disturbing, are not (or not by themselves alone) what make this book so extraordinary. Olstein says, "...uninterested in personal revelation, unwilling to yield even more precious time and attention, and inchoately flustered or dismayed by nearly everything I read on the subject [of migraine], I've avoided it. For years, my policy was a kind of zero tolerance vigilantly pursued: Give the monster nothing, not one minute more than what by stealth or by force it took. Accommodate what must be accommodated, but volunteer for nothing: not support group esprit de corps, not even, really, a moment's reflection. Another form of magical thinking, a felt superstition: don't let the gods mistake your intent. So why am I writing this?" And why are we (migraineurs) reading this?
The exquisite shock, the relief of recognition, is, for me, the pleasure of someone having created a document that in both form and content communicates the nature of living with/in migraine, which is something that is close to impossible to communicate.
Communicates it to people with migraine; I don't know what the reading experience would be like for someone without migraine (or some other form of chronic pain). Possibly some caregivers, who often learn over time to attend closely to every aspect of a chronic migraineur's existence, would also felt spoken to.
This is not a book about How To Live With Migraine or How to Improve Your Migraine Condition; it is not a historical or cultural survey of migraine (though Olstein draws on those elements. It won't make your migraine disease better (or worse) to read it, but for me, it's definitely better to have had this book to read.
December 10, 2020
“All pain is simple. And all pain is complex. You’re in it and you want to get out. How can the ocean be not beautiful? The ocean is not beautiful today.”
So begins Lisa Olstein’s beautifully meditative lyric essay, Pain Studies, which will resonate for anyone who has lived with chronic pain. She writes about Joan of Arc, House, M. D., Virginia Woolf and Maggie Nelson. She quotes Alphonse Daudet—“Pain is always different to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him. Everyone will get used to it but me.”—and Jane Goodall—“Every day brings its own kind of education.” —and her son, who is rightly pleased with his image when he tells her, “Mama, what I think of migraine is like a flock of migrating birds coming and hitting your head—not on the outside, but on the inside of your mind.”
It is a funny kind of relief to read about pain; it can give you a sense of schadenfreude, of course, but it can also make you feel so seen. It can make an invisible thing feel visible, and while that doesn’t necessarily make it more tolerable, it might make it a shade more acceptable.
So begins Lisa Olstein’s beautifully meditative lyric essay, Pain Studies, which will resonate for anyone who has lived with chronic pain. She writes about Joan of Arc, House, M. D., Virginia Woolf and Maggie Nelson. She quotes Alphonse Daudet—“Pain is always different to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him. Everyone will get used to it but me.”—and Jane Goodall—“Every day brings its own kind of education.” —and her son, who is rightly pleased with his image when he tells her, “Mama, what I think of migraine is like a flock of migrating birds coming and hitting your head—not on the outside, but on the inside of your mind.”
It is a funny kind of relief to read about pain; it can give you a sense of schadenfreude, of course, but it can also make you feel so seen. It can make an invisible thing feel visible, and while that doesn’t necessarily make it more tolerable, it might make it a shade more acceptable.
August 15, 2020
As a sufferer of chronic migraines -- my longest lasted six months straight -- I was really looking forward to this collection of essays on pain, especially since the author also suffers from chronic migraines and this is the focus of her essays. But it fell a bit flat and it felt very repetitive to me.
August 17, 2025
Pain Studies – Lisa Olstein (2020)
Am tras efectiv de mine să termin această carte. Prezentarea mi s-a părut promițătoare: un eseu personal, liric, despre migrenă și durerea cronică. Lisa Olstein, poetă și eseistă americană, cunoscută pentru mai multe volume de poezie și pentru activitatea ei de profesoară de scriere creativă, ne împărtășește experiența personală cu migrenele, încercând să le dea un limbaj și o formă literară. Intenția este lăudabilă și necesară: migrena cronică este greu de împărtășit celor care nu o trăiesc, iar literatura are poate puterea de a umaniza această realitate.
Există pasaje foarte reușite, în care am simțit că Olstein reușește să prindă ceva din inefabilul durerii. „Începe ca o pâlpâire, o umbră în colțul vederii, apoi se umflă până umple întreg câmpul vizual.” Sau: „O migrenă este o oră care refuză să se termine, și apoi alta, și alta.” Când scrie astfel, Olstein atinge o expresivitate autentică și dă voce unei experiențe pe care mulți o cunosc, dar puțini o pot descrie.
Am apreciat aceste momente poetice, dar imediat după ele aveam impresia că autoarea caută neapărat un alt punct de digresiune, doar pentru a mai umple o pagină. Salturile de la Wittgenstein la existențialiști, apoi la Ioana d’Arc, ca să revină brusc la liste cu tratamente medicale, m-au făcut să simt că Olstein a vrut să folosească toate tehnicile pe care probabil le predă elevilor ei. Pentru mine, rezultatul a fost un colaj obositor, mai degrabă o demonstrație de metode decât o voce coerentă.
Poate sunt prea dură, dar pentru mine Pain Studies nu a funcționat ca ansamblu. Nu am reușit să mă conectez cu vocea scriitoarei, iar asta cred că ține de faptul că am întâlnit deja în multe alte locuri aceleași artificii și mijloace de expresie. Chiar și așa, rămâne meritul Lisei Olstein că a încercat să dea o formă literară unei experiențe aproape imposibil de tradus pentru ceilalți. Între intenție și rezultat, însă, distanța a fost pentru mine prea mare. Doar 2 stele din 5 pentru acest volum.
Am tras efectiv de mine să termin această carte. Prezentarea mi s-a părut promițătoare: un eseu personal, liric, despre migrenă și durerea cronică. Lisa Olstein, poetă și eseistă americană, cunoscută pentru mai multe volume de poezie și pentru activitatea ei de profesoară de scriere creativă, ne împărtășește experiența personală cu migrenele, încercând să le dea un limbaj și o formă literară. Intenția este lăudabilă și necesară: migrena cronică este greu de împărtășit celor care nu o trăiesc, iar literatura are poate puterea de a umaniza această realitate.
Există pasaje foarte reușite, în care am simțit că Olstein reușește să prindă ceva din inefabilul durerii. „Începe ca o pâlpâire, o umbră în colțul vederii, apoi se umflă până umple întreg câmpul vizual.” Sau: „O migrenă este o oră care refuză să se termine, și apoi alta, și alta.” Când scrie astfel, Olstein atinge o expresivitate autentică și dă voce unei experiențe pe care mulți o cunosc, dar puțini o pot descrie.
Am apreciat aceste momente poetice, dar imediat după ele aveam impresia că autoarea caută neapărat un alt punct de digresiune, doar pentru a mai umple o pagină. Salturile de la Wittgenstein la existențialiști, apoi la Ioana d’Arc, ca să revină brusc la liste cu tratamente medicale, m-au făcut să simt că Olstein a vrut să folosească toate tehnicile pe care probabil le predă elevilor ei. Pentru mine, rezultatul a fost un colaj obositor, mai degrabă o demonstrație de metode decât o voce coerentă.
Poate sunt prea dură, dar pentru mine Pain Studies nu a funcționat ca ansamblu. Nu am reușit să mă conectez cu vocea scriitoarei, iar asta cred că ține de faptul că am întâlnit deja în multe alte locuri aceleași artificii și mijloace de expresie. Chiar și așa, rămâne meritul Lisei Olstein că a încercat să dea o formă literară unei experiențe aproape imposibil de tradus pentru ceilalți. Între intenție și rezultat, însă, distanța a fost pentru mine prea mare. Doar 2 stele din 5 pentru acest volum.
October 25, 2025
I don't know that I've read a lot (or any) of creative nonfiction or "lyric essays," but I think it's safe to say they're not for me. I didn't like this at all. It read like a personal blog (for instance, my own...), and I could not imagine ever wanting to publish my rambling, loosely connected blog.
She references a lot of interesting things and then never goes in depth about them. There's lots of things that maybe sort of connect or are maybe sort of relevant, but only to her, and I couldn't figure out why she was talking about it. I spent a good majority of this book trying to figure out what the point was - and that was drilled into me in academia: if you're writing nonfiction you have to have a point. I'm a bit of a hypocrite here though, because I was constantly trying to rebel against that point requirement.
It feels silly and plain stupid of me to dislike this because it doesn't have a point, because I'm an artist and I always hated having to justify my art, to give it a point, and to make that point clearly legible to the audience. This book read an awful lot like some of the dance theater pieces I've produced. So I shouldn't hate it... but I still do.
There's a seemingly throwaway line towards the end where she quotes herself, saying, "suffering is private." And maybe that's the point of book, to bring private suffering into a public setting, to tie it in with the way the public perceives suffering (and perception itself definitely seems to be her focus).
She also perpetuates the myth (in an actual throwaway line) about how peeing on a jellyfish sting will ease the pain. I am begging people to fact check myths. This book isn't about jellyfish at all but reading that one line (that went nowhere) pissed me off (no pun intended) and then I was irrationally annoyed every time I picked it back up because I'd remember her mentioning jellyfish.
Obviously it made me think a lot, even if a lot of that thinking was fueled by irritation.
She references a lot of interesting things and then never goes in depth about them. There's lots of things that maybe sort of connect or are maybe sort of relevant, but only to her, and I couldn't figure out why she was talking about it. I spent a good majority of this book trying to figure out what the point was - and that was drilled into me in academia: if you're writing nonfiction you have to have a point. I'm a bit of a hypocrite here though, because I was constantly trying to rebel against that point requirement.
It feels silly and plain stupid of me to dislike this because it doesn't have a point, because I'm an artist and I always hated having to justify my art, to give it a point, and to make that point clearly legible to the audience. This book read an awful lot like some of the dance theater pieces I've produced. So I shouldn't hate it... but I still do.
There's a seemingly throwaway line towards the end where she quotes herself, saying, "suffering is private." And maybe that's the point of book, to bring private suffering into a public setting, to tie it in with the way the public perceives suffering (and perception itself definitely seems to be her focus).
She also perpetuates the myth (in an actual throwaway line) about how peeing on a jellyfish sting will ease the pain. I am begging people to fact check myths. This book isn't about jellyfish at all but reading that one line (that went nowhere) pissed me off (no pun intended) and then I was irrationally annoyed every time I picked it back up because I'd remember her mentioning jellyfish.
Obviously it made me think a lot, even if a lot of that thinking was fueled by irritation.
September 19, 2024
lisa olstein's pain studies is one of the most tedious things i have ever experienced. its a series of lists and dictionary definitions in between flowery and overly verbose prose designed to make you think theres something insightful happening. whenever olstein focuses long enough to actually talk about her experiences with migraines (something i also struggle with), i felt engaged and empathetic. however, those passages were VERY few and far between. she would also immediately undermine those moments of vulnerability with some boring list or definition that almost always felt like a non sequitur. i would give it another star for those fleeting moments of semi enjoyable text but theres something so frustrating about having to endure hours and hours and pages and pages of fucking nonsense to get to a morsel of something i could latch onto.
if i had to sum it up in one word, pain studies is disjointed. there is no flow, no narrative, no thread connecting everything together except this vaguely defined epicureanism angle shoehorned into the text. everything felt forced on top of also being badly summarized. what does joan of arc have to do with pain? shes a woman who wasnt believed by the men around her. olstein vaguely gestures at her own experiences with doctors giving her conflicting advice on pain management but, aside from a single passage, thats about it. we as readers are meant to form a deeper understanding to something that was very loosely alluded to and from this we are meant to have this profound 'mind blown' moment. all i saw was a missed opportunity that left me not really wanting more because olstein doesnt seem interested in providing anything at all.
if i had to sum it up in one word, pain studies is disjointed. there is no flow, no narrative, no thread connecting everything together except this vaguely defined epicureanism angle shoehorned into the text. everything felt forced on top of also being badly summarized. what does joan of arc have to do with pain? shes a woman who wasnt believed by the men around her. olstein vaguely gestures at her own experiences with doctors giving her conflicting advice on pain management but, aside from a single passage, thats about it. we as readers are meant to form a deeper understanding to something that was very loosely alluded to and from this we are meant to have this profound 'mind blown' moment. all i saw was a missed opportunity that left me not really wanting more because olstein doesnt seem interested in providing anything at all.
December 31, 2023
I really liked this, even though I found it a challenge to connect all the meandering ideas, and I shifted to reading it as prose poetry and letting the connections emerge without forcing them. (However the frank clarity of some sections, such as the House M.D. digressions, meant I had to keep shifting my approach. And I'm not complaining.) I just read the Rain Taxi review by John Wall Barger who also found a way to read it and I like this: he "gradually began to think of Pain Studies as a kind of travel literature, a Gulliver's Travels-like guidebook for those visiting the land of pain (or more specifically, Olstein's private pain island) [. . .] so we might learn to be more sympathetic to the citizens who live there full time."
When Olstein complains about the ubiquitous numeric 10-point pain scale she says "they weren't written by the right people -- the people in pain." I want to remind her that no, I think that the numeric pain scale and "pain is the fifth vital sign" originated with Purdue Pharma and the American Pain Society (a professional organization forced to close in 2019 "amid allegations that it colluded with pharmaceutical companies producing opioids").
When Olstein complains about the ubiquitous numeric 10-point pain scale she says "they weren't written by the right people -- the people in pain." I want to remind her that no, I think that the numeric pain scale and "pain is the fifth vital sign" originated with Purdue Pharma and the American Pain Society (a professional organization forced to close in 2019 "amid allegations that it colluded with pharmaceutical companies producing opioids").
July 21, 2020
“...The thing is, hope doesn't run the numbers on what falls within reach versus what remains beyond our grasp, so each time we start, we start at zero, and this is the rub. Over and over we may hope, but in doing so, sometimes we rub raw. For years, my biggest fear was that I would unwittingly turn away from the one thing that would finally help me, So I kept on with my quest, kept troubling each decision with this fear not only of missing out but of somehow foolishly being the one to make myself miss out on my one chance at a cure. After too many hours, medicines, modalities, and dollars to tally, I still harbor this fear, but a new one has taken up residence beside it--not a fear exactly, a feeling: maybe to keep hoping to keep questing, is its own kind of pain; maybe I need to stop."
This little book arrested me. The author’s journey with migraines is chopped up in strange pieces. But that is exactly how pain fragments your mind and body and narrative. There is no language for some kinds of suffering.
This little book arrested me. The author’s journey with migraines is chopped up in strange pieces. But that is exactly how pain fragments your mind and body and narrative. There is no language for some kinds of suffering.
August 21, 2020
4.5 of 5, for me. But the writing resonated with me enough to give it that last extra half star. You can really feel Olstein's poetry background, and it makes for wonderfully lucid and beautiful prose. The whole book is like an extended poem meditating on pain, what it does to a body, what it does to a mind, how we manage, ignore, identify with it. I also appreciate the wide range of materials that she brings to bare on this meditation; television, Greek philosophy, literature, music, art. Pain is everywhere, not just all around us but within us (some of us more than others). And yet we have so little language or dialogue about pain. Not pain as pain, at least. We're so quick to ascribe meaning to pain, to try to name and tame it, that we neglect to pay attention to pain. It is not noble to suffer, but neither is it noble to ignore the obvious. And to those in pain, there can be little more obvious than the facts of their discomfort.
Read
April 8, 2020Pain Studies is a book about migraine and so much more. It’s a long essay on what it’s like to live with pain and on the range of meanings migraine holds. She writes about the many methods she has tried to ease her pain, the many diagnoses and pieces of advice doctors have given her, and the many ways her life has changed because of chronic illness. Alongside her story of being a long-time migraine sufferer, she discusses Joan of Arc, House M.D., art, philosophy, and language, looking at the ways pain is portrayed in art and the metaphorical resonances of migraine. She shows how seemingly impossible it is to write about pain, and yet at the same time manages to write beautifully about it. Olstein is a poet, which is clear in the quality of her language. This book is rich, absorbing, and suggestive.
https://bookriot.com/2020/03/20/indie...
https://bookriot.com/2020/03/20/indie...
September 22, 2020
There were individual chapters, fragments, and thoughts I found really compelling (the "stimulating negation" of the color blue, Joan of Arc's revelations as a kind of private suffering akin to chronic pain, "Would I cut off a hand? Yes, the left," critiquing how House M.D. depicts pain, the varying uses of denial, etc.), and the opening is a slam dunk ("All pain is simple, and all pain is complex. You're in it and you want to get out. How can the ocean not be beautiful? The ocean is not beautiful today"). As a book, however, this didn't feel cohesive. I'm not sure how I'd describe the structure other than "lyrical," and it felt as though chapters followed one another / that the book ended where it did on a whim rather than with clear intent. I wanted more guidance and less stream-of-consciousness, I think.
April 21, 2022
"One way or another, when it comes to chronic, most of us reach the outer limits of empathy's gravitational pull and then slip right on through. What, then, to do with a condition that is both: crisis and chronic, a kind of emergency set on endless, if intermittent and variable, repeat?"
🪡 🪡🪡
Pain studies threads inquiry, theory, investigation, art, and so much more through the writers experience of living with chronic migraine and how it shapes her and her life's work. It's a fascinating delve into chronic pain & if you're a fellow migraine sufferer, a fellow chronically ill person like myself, I suggest you pick it up.
🪡 🪡🪡
Pain studies threads inquiry, theory, investigation, art, and so much more through the writers experience of living with chronic migraine and how it shapes her and her life's work. It's a fascinating delve into chronic pain & if you're a fellow migraine sufferer, a fellow chronically ill person like myself, I suggest you pick it up.
March 18, 2020
I don't know that I *enjoyed* this book, per se, but I did find these meditations fascinating and hard to put down. The writing itself felt disjointed and meandering, but that felt honest to me, resonating with how my own mind works. It worked (for me) as lyrical essay and memoir. Olstein makes some interesting connections between different genres and historical periods...I most appreciated her observations of the medical system, scientific applications, existentialism, and her sweet anecdotes about her son.
November 22, 2020
The Joan of Arc stuff is cool, her unflinching and unorthodox relationship with language even as language was used in procedural violence against her. Also liked the synesthetic ruminations on color: red as cheap viscera, and blue as “stimulating negation” that draws us to it even as it recedes.
Fractured, fragmented, elusive, frustrating, kind of like pain itself. Feels like talking to someone who’s functioning on another plane of logic altogether. I don’t know. This one made me feel like a dumbass; clearly there’s something I’m not getting.
Fractured, fragmented, elusive, frustrating, kind of like pain itself. Feels like talking to someone who’s functioning on another plane of logic altogether. I don’t know. This one made me feel like a dumbass; clearly there’s something I’m not getting.
August 14, 2023
I have immense respect for anyone who endeavors to write about what it is like to live with chronic pain. However, I found that this book introduced too many new ideas without clear meaning or any kind of ultimate resolution. Olstein is a good writer and clearly does have interesting and compelling things to say about chronic pain/illness: “I learned there’s no good time to be stricken, and no preparation for being struck.” It was disappointing to see this book’s most meaningful moments buried in a sea of disjointed ideas.
June 18, 2020
I’m so rarely this person, but as a writer and scholar, this book was let down horribly by its title. Bearing another name would allow this book to shine as the short collection of lyric essays on chronic migraine. The prose is beautiful, the topic compelling, the narrator insightful and detailed. But to call itself Pain Studies, when this is an entire field of writing and rhetoric, is a dramatic overstep.
July 5, 2020
This is not a novel. This is not a scientific study. This is not a long book whose monetary value is proven by the high number of pages. This is a book of that reads like having a conversation with your poet friend who is prone to monologues. That worked for me. I feel like I understand Olstein's experience with migraines and how they have become woven into her understanding of the world.
August 4, 2020
I enjoyed Olstein's "Pain Studies." I think "Pain Studies" could be a good introduction first book for someone with chronic pain or for a family member or friends of a person with chronic pain. "Pain Studies" is a memoir and fairly, but quite readable.
I'd read that Olstein is a poet and I'd hoped their would be more poetry in "Pain Studies" but you can't have everything.
I'd read that Olstein is a poet and I'd hoped their would be more poetry in "Pain Studies" but you can't have everything.
February 5, 2021
2.5 stars: There are a few interesting philosophical musings here (particularly in the pages between the late 80s and early 90s on pain as both isolating and empathy-enhancing, and again near the end of the book on pain as meaning vs. meaningful), but overall the writing felt too intellectual and fragmented for its aim and within its place in the pain/patient memoir genre.
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