Customer Reviews

Raising the Dead: A Doctor's Encounter with His Own Mortality

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I was moved to tears and laughter. Two extremes which both brought comfort on this journey across the River of Death. Selzer takes the helm as Charon, the ferryman, and relays a superb tale of one man's travels into the Realm of Shades, what that man saw there, how those things affected him and what he brought back. That man was the author himself, telling the difficult story of his own 23 days of coma and three weeks of recovery. A brutal and poignant honesty is achieved through metaphor and imagery the like of which literally took my breath away several times. Selzer is a brilliant writer, a deep thinker and a philosopher for these modern times. In his intense need to chronicle his very intimate and personal experience of illness he decides against "going towards the light" and instead chooses to stage his own death and descend into a place of poetic vision and metaphorical insight. His version of the events are so beautifully rendered and when he is urged to forget all about his coma and the ravages incurred by his body he thinks "But they are mistaken who would squelch the longing to know. Man's greatest pleasure is remembering. It's what makes us godlike, distinguiishes us from the animals. Remembering is a way of reclaiming what was mine, what had been taken away from me."

This is a wandering book of author Dr. Richard Selzer's own brush with death. His excellent writing shines in bits and pieces but on a whole this book is too vague and stilted for my preferences.

A WANDERING STORY
This vague and wandering story may very well have been a creation to illustrate the odd state of mind Dr. Selzer found himself in once he woke from his coma and 10 minute death episode. He at times thought he was in a monastery, on the Nile and in other exotic locales. At any point in time, also thinking that the nursing staff were conspiring to keep him from his freedom.

HIS SIDELINE STORY OF A FAMOUS AUTHOR'S BRUSH WITH BREAST REMOVAL SURGERY, PRIOR TO ANESTHESIA MAKES FOR TERRIFYING READING
Some reviewers suggested this was an artifice added to increase the page count. I'll be honest, this was an excellent portion of the book preparing the reader to realize that writing about your own illness is bound to portray you as a victim or a hero. Nothing in between. It is interesting that Dr. Selzer included this and adds to the book. I'm also happy to have been born after the use of anesthesia.

TOO MANY SHIFTS TO KEEP MY INTEREST
He does an excellent job of describing himself in the 3rd person, however, the switches of storyline from paragraph to paragraph, I found hard to keep my interest. Sometimes a artistic device gets in the way of the story. I found his forays into his imaginary worlds a bit to artful at time. It is one thing to be literary, it is another to outreach most of your audience. Either that or I'm not too bright. Both are possible.

HAS RICHARD SELZER'S SIGNATURE EXCELLENT CAPTURE OF DETAIL:
As usual each section is excellent in its attention to detail. (I don't think I will ever look at tulips the same). Also, he gives you a feel for the wandering mind grasping to make sense of all that has happened. He pieces together odd sections of facts and changes a broken pot into a horse in his reconstruction of events. These perceptions alone can make for an odd reality.

CAREGIVERS WERE WELL CHARACTERIZED AND WELL AFTER THE FACT APPRECIATED
His portrait of his caregivers is well done from the nurse from Troy to the lyrical Irishman that tended to him. He also portrays himself (Accurately I'm sure) as the crabby patient he was. Doctors make the worse patients.

An interesting book.

As a physician, I am always interested how my colleagues portray the various aspects of our profession. I believe the lay public is also fascinated by physician-authors in the hope that they will pull back the curtain and let us in on the secrets of medicine. I have read most of Selzer's works and found them disappointing, for the most part. This holds true for Raising the Dead. Selzer frequently overwrites and I would characterize his prose as florid. One senses that he enjoys talking about himself more than medicine or its effect on others. I find the works of Sherwin Nuland, Lewis Thomas, and the non-fiction works of Michael Crichton much more realistic, satisfying and written by physicians who have less to say about themselves and more about medicine-how it is and how it should be.