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The Undying (book)

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For the 2011 American film, see The Undying (film).
For other uses, see Undying.

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care
Cover image of the book, The Undying by Anne Boyer, depicting a snake coiled around a syringe
First edition cover image
AuthorAnne Boyer
Audio read byAmy Finegan[1]
Cover artistStrick&Williams[2]
LanguageEnglish
Subject
Genre
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
17 September 2019
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages308/320 (first edition)[3]
AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
ISBN978-0-374-27934-9 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC1089841413
616.99/4490092 B
LC ClassRC280.B8 B645 2019

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care is a 2019 memoir by the American author, poet, and essayist Anne Boyer. The book chronicles Boyer's experience as a breast cancer patient. Boyer takes an untraditional approach to the standard illness narrative, by weaving together her personal journey as a patient in treatment with reflections on art and literature, and critiques of capitalism and the medical industry.

The book won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award.[4] The Pulitzer committee described the book as "an elegant and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the capitalism of cancer care in America."[5]

Synopsis

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Image of Anne Boyer seated
Anne Boyer in 2023

At the age of 41, Anne Boyer is diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. She is a teacher and a single mother raising a daughter.

Boyer reflects on the flaws in the American healthcare system. Despite undergoing intensive chemotherapy with medications like cyclophosphamide and doxorubicin,[6] Boyer must consistently work. Ten days after her double mastectomy she gives a university lecture on Walt Whitman's The Sleepers with surgical drainage bags stitched to her compression dressings.

Reception

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Reviews

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Numerous reviews have described The Undying as an unflinching look at cancer treatment.[7][8] The New York Times' nonfiction critic, Jennifer Szalai, called Boyer's memoir "extraordinary and furious."[9] In a review for The New York Review of Books, Nellie Hermann writes about how Boyer's memoir can not be easily categorised as a standard illness narrative.[10]

NPR's Sascha Cohen writes, "The Undying catalogs the unceasing losses that accompany a breast cancer diagnosis in the 21st century." Cohen calls the memoir an "anti-capitalist indictment, as biting cultural criticism, as vengeance."[11]

Parallels between works mentioned by Boyer, such as, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Kathy Acker’s “The Gift of Disease,” and Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor are often evoked in reviews. Anna Picard writes for The Times Literary Supplement, that Boyer's memoir joins, "the slender library of literary, as opposed to journalistic, responses to breast cancer and breast cancer treatment."[12]

"The Undying is not an individual tale of redemption, nor an atomised story of suffering," writes Elisa Adami for Art Monthly. "Countering the lonesome desolation of illness that oncological praxis and society's own entrenched custom of segregation work to produce, Boyer strives to address and call into being a collectivity of the sick. In the revelatory light of 'pain's leaking democracy', the book attests to the vital need for collective and social remedies for healing not just our sick bodies but the sick world we inhabit too."[13]

Awards and honours

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Editions

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  • Anne Boyer (17 September 2019). The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-27934-9.
  • Audiobook narrated by Amy Finegan, published by Recorded Books, Inc. and Blackstone Publishing, 15 November 2019
  • E-book editions

References

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  1. ^ "The Undying". OverDrive. Archived from the original on 24 April 2024. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  2. ^ "The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer". The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer. Retrieved 27 April 2024.
  3. ^ Boyer, Anne (2019). The undying: pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-27934-9. Archived from the original on 24 April 2024. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  4. ^ "Announcing the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists". PEN America. 28 January 2020. Archived from the original on 30 January 2022. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  5. ^ "Anne Boyer". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  6. ^ Boyer, Anne (8 April 2019). "What Cancer Takes Away". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 21 July 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  7. ^ Shapiro, Emily (20 January 2020). "The Undying by Anne Boyer". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  8. ^ DO, Joan Naidorf (25 August 2021). "The DO Book Club, Aug. 2021: The Undying". The DO. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  9. ^ Szalai, Jennifer (10 September 2019). "'The Undying,' an Extraordinary and Furious New Memoir About Cancer". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 21 March 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  10. ^ Hermann, Nellie (5 November 2020). "Cancer Under Capitalism". The New York Review of Books. Vol. 67, no. 17. ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  11. ^ Cohen, Sascha (17 September 2019). "'The Undying' Catalogs The Unceasing Losses Of A Breast Cancer Diagnosis". NPR. Archived from the original on 15 December 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
  12. ^ Picard, Anna (13 December 2019). "Lost to myself: A serious, funny and righteous response to cancer". TLS. Times Literary Supplement (6089): 26–27.
  13. ^ Adami, Elisa (1 January 2019). "Book Review: Anne Boyer, The Undying: A Meditation on Modern Illness". Art Monthly.
  14. ^ "Anne Boyer". www.pulitzer.org. Archived from the original on 12 September 2023. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  15. ^ "Announcing the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists". PEN America. 28 January 2020. Archived from the original on 30 January 2022. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
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