Notes from the Sick Room: Illness in Music, Literature and Art - Softcover

Steve Finbow

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910924970 ISBN 13: 9781910924976

Publisher: Repeater, 2017

Synopsis

Notes from the Sick Room takes place in an imaginary hospital that bends the rules of time and space. Within its wards and departments we meet artists, musicians and writers who have suffered from various physical illnesses - cancer, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and physical trauma. Their lives and works are discussed in an attempt to diagnose how their complaints influenced their work or how their creativity affected their symptoms. We meet Virginia Woolf, Kathy Acker, Frida Kahlo, Katherine Mansfield, Bob Dylan Bruce Chatwin and many others as they struggle to produce works of art, literature and music while in denial, acceptance or flight and through periods of serious illness and convalescence. As we move through the hospital, specialists keep us informed of the history of creativity and illness and the author divulges his own medical history.

About this title

About the Author

Steve Finbow's fiction includes Balzac of the Badlands (Future Fiction London, 2009), Tougher Than Anything in the Animal Kingdom (Grievous Jones Press, 2011), Nothing Matters (Snubnose Press, 2012). His biography of Allen Ginsberg in Reaktion's Critical Lives series was published in 2011. His other works include Grave Desire: A Cultural History of Necrophilia (Zero Books, 2014) and Down Among the Dead (Number Thirteen Press, 2014). He was recently writer-in-residence at The Function Room.

Edition details

• Publisher: Repeater
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1910924970
• ISBN 13: 9781910924976
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 343