Main description:

A Richard Selzer Reader: Blood and Ink is a career-spanning collection, including major short stories and essays by the renowned doctor-author. In the 1960s, while practicing as a general surgeon and teaching surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, Richard Selzer began publishing unique creative work in magazines such as Harper's and Esquire. By 1985, when he retired as a physician to devote himself completely to writing, Selzer was already recognized as a pioneer in the field of medical humanities. When he died in 2016, as the author of 13 books, his influence was acknowledged by a younger generation of doctor-writers like Abraham Verghese and Atul Gawande.
Selzer's unusual style fuses scientific and poetic language. Drawing on favorite readings, from the King James Bible to the tales of Edgar Allen Poe, he used this style to convey a sense of awe at the beauty and complexity of the human body, even in the midst of suffering. While describing himself as an atheist, Selzer always searched for "sacramental" moments of courtesy, courage, and grace in medical encounters. Because he often looked critically at the failure of doctors to regard the full humanity of their patients, Selzer's work has become required reading in many medical training programs.
A Richard Selzer Reader includes several of the author's most famous essays and stories, as well as two dozen selections that have not been collected in his previous books. Chronologically, the material ranges from apprenticeship stories (as far back as a high-school composition) to two odd self-portraits that remained unpublished at the time of Selzer's death. Topically, the material ranges from meditations on the body, and on human mortality, to reflections on both medicine and writing as serious vocations. Along the way, Selzer celebrates the work of other doctor-writers, like Thomas Browne and Anton Chekhov, and in a series of previously unpublished diary entries he discusses the joys of nature, art, and family as bulwarks against the difficulties of growing old.

Contents:

Acknowledgments
Editor's Preface
Introduction: "The Writer Richard Selzer: High, Low, and Mighty" by Marie Borroff
Chronology
Prologue
The Pen and the Scalpel
Part 1: Apprenticeship
On the Wire
Jonah and the Whale
A Single Minute of Fear
Fairview
Part 2: Anatomy Lessons
Liver
Bone
How Proudly It Heals: In Praise of the Body Republic
A Mother's Fury
Leonardo's Drawings
Flesh Holds the Truth, Mortality
The Corpse
The Ivory Crucifixion
Part 3: Being a Doctor
A Hero in a Rowboat
Emergency Medicine
Mercy
Taking the World in for Repairs
Imelda
Three Doctors: Conan Doyle, Watson, and Me
Reflections on Doctoring
Part 4: Illuminations
At St. Mary's
Longfellow, Virgil, and Me
Fetishes
Four Appointments with the Discus Thrower
Whither Thou Goest
Risen
Atrium: October 2001
Part 5: Being a Writer
Meditations on Style
Five Finger Exercises
To a Would-Be Doctor/ Writer
Notes for a Writing Workshop
Remembrance of Things
Wounded with Wonder: Richard Selzer Interviewed by Peter Josyph
Part 6: Homage
Afterlife of The Black Swan
A Tale of Two Cities Revisited
Crimean Vespers
Part 7: Diary Entries
Early Entries, Undated
2009
2010
2011
2012
Part 8: Two Unpublished Stories
Half Moon
Mister Stitches