Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, and Chronic Illness (Health Society And Policy) [Paperback]

Carolyn Ellis (Author)

Book Description

Series: Health Society And Policy | Publication Date: January 27, 1995

When Carolyn Ellis, a graduate student, and Gene Weinstein, her Professor, fell in love, he was experiencing the first stages of emphysema. As he became increasingly disabled and immobile, these two intensely connected partners fought to maintain their love and to live a meaningful life. They learned to negotiate their daily lives in a way that enabled each of them to feel sufficiently autonomous him not always like a patient and her not always like a caretaker. Writing as a sociologist, Ellis portrays their life together as a way to understand the complexities of romance, of living with a progressive illness, and, in the final negotiation and reversal of positions, of coping with the loss of a loved one. This rare memoir full of often raw details and emotions becomes an intimate conversation about the intricacies of feeling and relating in a relationship. What Ellis calls experimental ethnography is a finely crafted, forthright, and daring story framed by the author's reflections on writing about and analyzing one's own life. Casting off the safe distance of most social science inquiry, she surrenders the private shroud of a complex relationship to bring sociology closer to literature. Carolyn Ellis is Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida, Director of the Institute for Interpretive Human Studies, and author of several books, including "Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience" (co-edited with Michael Flaherty).

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This is an odd book. In the acknowledgments and part one, "Beginning," Ellis suggests that the reader will find it a closely reasoned technical-sociological treatise (it does have many references). Instead, it seems to be almost a transcript (rife with later insertions) of the affair during 1975-85 between sociology graduate student Ellis and one of her professors. She was 24 when she met Gene Weinstein, then 44 and already suffering from the emphysema that later claimed his life; they married in a hospital a few weeks before his death. In the book, Ellis also deals with other major deaths in her life: her brother's in an airplane crash, her father's, and that of a dog, her pet for 14 years. In its main action, her highly personal account takes her and Weinstein from New York to California and Florida and on a round-the-world jaunt. Weinstein keeps fighting his disease, pushing himself to the limit, while Ellis becomes increasingly involved in the struggle. William Beatty --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"This is a remarkably revealing portrait of a couple dealing with a debilitating chronic illness." --Kirkus Reviews "In this deeply poignant and personal text Carolyn Ellis offers a brilliant account of how the lingering death of a loved one creates the occasion for radical redefinitions of self. Death is a shared project. Loved ones do not always go gently into the good night. This is a story of death, identity, and love. In this work Ellis gives Gene Weinstein the greatest gift of all, a loving death. In so doing, she shows all of us how to do the same." --Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "Final Negotiations makes a unique contribution to sociology, the helping professions, and to families struggling with chronic illness. There is no other sociology book like it: Carolyn Ellis creates an intimate conversation about lived experience, relating, feeling, and working. She tells us two interrelated narratives--the story of her nine-year relationship with a partner who died of emphysema and the story of the writing of Final Negotiations. We are invited into a dialectics of intimacy to experience with her the complexly layered and nuanced emotions around attachment, love, power, jealousy, anger, care-taking, loss, and recovery. In a brilliant and courageous conclusion, we see how writing with passion about the Self, connecting sociology with literature, breaking genre boundaries are acts of recovery, release, and love. The reader will be treated to a most original, nervy, and memorable book." --Laurel Richardson, Ohio State University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 358 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; First Edition edition (January 27, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566392713
• ISBN-13: 978-1566392716
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #669,884 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent with real honesty and depth!, May 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, and Chronic Illness (Health Society And Policy) (Paperback)

This book is so insightful and a wonderful description of what it is like to be primary caretaker for one you love. The text is wonderfully written and moves you deeply into the lives of the characters. Ellis does not shy away from honesty, and in doing so helps us all better face the realities of caring for the terminally ill. On the other hand, Ellis still manages to leave us with hope.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Final Negotiations, August 13, 2005

By 

Rosalinda Mercado-Garza - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, and Chronic Illness (Health Society And Policy) (Paperback)

Ellis' autoethnographic novel graphically depicted details about the relationship she had with Gene who was her professor, partner and who later became her husband. As a scholar Ellis' Final Negotiations offered poignant thoughts, which are often ignored in academia. Ellis' experiences regarding her open relationship with Gene, his deteriorating health and her own professional growth, as a woman and scholar in her field were raw, authentic and made you appreciate healthy relationships, supportive colleagues and the ability to express yourself despite what critics have to say. Ellis' willingness to allow her readers to study how she analyzed her own subjectivity made me consider some of my inner thoughts. I recommend this book to anyone interested in finding hope and balance in all life bring us.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst book ever written, December 8, 2007

By 

Khatarnaak Khatun (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, and Chronic Illness (Health Society And Policy) (Paperback)

"Final Negotiations," for all its flaws, should help a lot of people. These are the people suffering from insomnia.

Think of the book as a sandwich. Two wafer-thin slices of sociology in the introduction and conclusion, holding between them a big fat slice of baloney.

The separation of evocative prose and sociology is the book's main flaw. In addition, the long narrative of illness is absolutely dull and tedious to read. It reads like.... fieldnotes. Like the fieldnotes of a goody two-shoes master's student who has discovered Autoethnography and is struggling to write one. Ellis is the author of good methodological treatises, but she can preach better than she can practice. "The Ethnographic I" is an excellent textbook, but "Final Negotations" is as scintillating as mucus.

I think more sex would have made the book halfway passable.