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Jun. 30th, 2007 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieReading a book called "The Culture of Pain" the introduction of which promised to be interesting--recognizing that mental and physical pain were closely connected, survey of art and history involving pain, etc. And then I run across the standard bullshit about our pill-popping, pain avoidant age as contrasted with the noble sages of the past who accepted that pain had "meaning" in their lives etc (surely the statement of a man who never suffered chronic pain) and then he marvels that for all the various ways of dealing with pain, pain is epidemic in our society and it seemed as though the more pills we took the more pain there was!
Um. Hello?
I want to read things by people who know what the hell they're talking about and have half a brain, not writers with logorrhea and a book contract.
Then adding to my frustration, the beginning of a chapter wherein he details his stay at a pain clinic for research purposes--the whole first two pages are all about how bitchin' it is to wear a lab coat and look like a doctor. He mentions that his donning the coat was the product of much negotiation with the clinic administration. Presumably to let us know how important lab coats are, symbolically, but also betraying the fact that he felt it neccesary to enter much negotiation so that he could wear the damn thing.
(I freely admit that it's fun to wear a lab coat, especially when you are, as I was, about fourteen and hanging out in your parents' lab "doing Current Contents"--most kids whose parents worked in the lab did Current Contents as a suplement to allowance at one time or another. It wasn't very exciting--the lab folks would circle the articles they wanted, and we would carefully fill out reprint request postcards and put them in the mail, and then go to the library and photocopy the ones we could find. But it did offer the small fun of occasionally going down to the cafeteria in a lab coat. I suspect we got to wear them because our parents knew it would be fun--as an adult, I would not go to the trouble of engaging in "negotiations" in order to wear one.)
Anyway. I'm debating whether to continue reading just in case there's actual information or insight, or whether I should just put it back on the stack and pick up the next one.
ETA-Right, I think I'm done with this book.
Uh huh. So long, dude.
Um. Hello?
I want to read things by people who know what the hell they're talking about and have half a brain, not writers with logorrhea and a book contract.
Then adding to my frustration, the beginning of a chapter wherein he details his stay at a pain clinic for research purposes--the whole first two pages are all about how bitchin' it is to wear a lab coat and look like a doctor. He mentions that his donning the coat was the product of much negotiation with the clinic administration. Presumably to let us know how important lab coats are, symbolically, but also betraying the fact that he felt it neccesary to enter much negotiation so that he could wear the damn thing.
(I freely admit that it's fun to wear a lab coat, especially when you are, as I was, about fourteen and hanging out in your parents' lab "doing Current Contents"--most kids whose parents worked in the lab did Current Contents as a suplement to allowance at one time or another. It wasn't very exciting--the lab folks would circle the articles they wanted, and we would carefully fill out reprint request postcards and put them in the mail, and then go to the library and photocopy the ones we could find. But it did offer the small fun of occasionally going down to the cafeteria in a lab coat. I suspect we got to wear them because our parents knew it would be fun--as an adult, I would not go to the trouble of engaging in "negotiations" in order to wear one.)
Anyway. I'm debating whether to continue reading just in case there's actual information or insight, or whether I should just put it back on the stack and pick up the next one.
ETA-Right, I think I'm done with this book.
It is a puzzling fact that in the twentieth century hysteria has declined precipitously as a medical diagnosis. The near disappearance of hysteria represents a social and medical change on the same order of magnitued as the almost total annihilation of tuberculosis.
Uh huh. So long, dude.