New Historicism Theory Analysis

NEW HISTORICISM

Intoxicated by My Illness (Short Story)

by Anatole Broyard

Synopsis:

Intoxicated By My Illness, is a personal statement about the effect of this illness on Broyard’s attitude and is rich with his own and others’ literary sense of how he should and did react to it. It deals with literature and illness as opposed to the emphasis on death. Susan Sontag, Norman Cousins and Siegel, among other students of this subject. It is interesting to compare the more powerful and personal and moving appeal of the later writings on illness) to the more abstract, critical ruminations on death (Part 5) at a time when, in fact, Part 5 was a literary exercise. Part 2 is written with the pen of the heart.

Part 3 is a wonderful account of Broyard’s first meeting with his personal physician. While Broyard analyzes this man, he reflects on what he would like in his ideal doctor. Part 4 is a brief (7 pages) collection of short diary entries reminiscent of Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings. Part 5 includes essays on death and dying in literature and what these books, e.g., Robert Kastenbaum’s Between Life and Death and David Hendin’s Death as a Fact of Life and Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death, have to offer us.

Part 6 is a short story about his father’s death, the son’s sexual escapades and the relationship between the two. Clearly sex, death and their nexus have long been on Broyard’s mind. This is a welcome reflection and is of interest more as it compares to Broyard’s later writings on the subject, especially in Part 2, than for its intrinsic worth as a short story.

Analysis:

This literary piece is a treasure trove of unique material. For this short story shows a New Historicism theory of literature because here, you can understand the text by knowing its author’s background and reason why he/she had written it. The author expresses his encyclopedic acquaintance with fine literature as well as the more traditional literature and medicine works in an unusually light and clear style.

There are countless sentences that one wishes to include in any course on literature and medicine: "I’m not interested in the irony of my position. Cancer cures you of irony. Perhaps my irony was all in my prostate." (Part 1) "Poetry, for example, might be defined as language writing itself out of a difficult situation." (Part 2); "The mechanics of diagnosis are mostly done, in my ignorant opinion, by technicians. The technicians bring in the raw material. The doctor puts them into a poem of diagnosis." (Part 3).

The author was intensely interested in his style of illness and spent much time trying to get at it and explicate it in "Intoxicated by My Illness." He succeeded admirably in doing so, for his style in writing was the same as his style in illness --an irrepressible affirmation of the recoverability of meaning from personal experience when armed with education, bravery and optimism.