Pain Studies

As someone with medical problems and pain management challenges, I was hoping this book might provide some insight as to how to confront pain. Or, at the least, to let me know I'm not alone. Neither happened for this reader. This book was odd. It offered confusing lists (e.g., regarding Joan of Arc:......more

3.5 stars. What I like most about this book is Olstein's sincerity, her analysis of House MD, and her inclusion of Lucretius's concept of clinamen, or swerve. Pain Studies certainly swerves, but sometimes without any sort of definitive direction, it seems. The book's structure could've been a bit ti......more

Pain Studies is a lovely, thoughtful collection of lyric essays that explore the intersection between pain, language, and perception. Olstein writes about our inability to express pain. She says, "[e]xiled from the kingdom of health, the ill inherit a different land. What is shattered here? Language......more

Lisa Olstein is a poet and suffers from migraines. In Pain Studies, these two facets of her identity combine to create a study of pain by way of the artist. I have very mixed feelings regarding this text so I'll start with what I didn't enjoy, and then go into a discussion of what I did like/her gen......more

First off, I received a copy of this book through the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing. I'm grateful to the publisher for the copy of this; I read an ARC, and so some aspects may have changed in the course of publishing. This book interesting series of meditations on migraine and pain. Olstei......more