A BRAIN WIDER THAN THE SKY
A Migraine Diary
Author: Andrew Levy
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (289 pages)
A Migraine Diary
Author: Andrew Levy
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (289 pages)
Reviewer: Christine Montross (Washington Post)
It's no easy business to write about pain. Memoirs of illness and injury too frequently end up either as proud testimonies of endurance or self-indulgent tomes. Andrew Levy's beautiful memoir, A Brain Wider Than the Sky, is welcome relief.
A professor of English at Butler University, Levy is also an accomplished writer, who here turns his exacting gaze inward: He invites us to accompany him on a harrowing descent as he changes from a man who has suffered from occasional headaches into the victim of an unremitting, four-month-long, life-altering migraine.
It's no easy business to write about pain. Memoirs of illness and injury too frequently end up either as proud testimonies of endurance or self-indulgent tomes. Andrew Levy's beautiful memoir, A Brain Wider Than the Sky, is welcome relief.
A professor of English at Butler University, Levy is also an accomplished writer, who here turns his exacting gaze inward: He invites us to accompany him on a harrowing descent as he changes from a man who has suffered from occasional headaches into the victim of an unremitting, four-month-long, life-altering migraine.
Inevitably, when Levy is confronted with this disorienting and disabling pain, he is driven to wonder why he is afflicted. Happily for his readers, he does not ask, "Why me?" but rather, "Why any of us?" What follows is an affecting, readable account of the pain of migraine and the weird wonder of it. Levy seamlessly glides from the experience of his own suffering to broader neurological and historical realms, including a number of jaw-dropping anecdotes about migraine and its treatment.
Levy guides us through a range of theories regarding the causes of migraine, including Sigmund Freud's laughable hypothesis that his daughter's first menstruation gave him "a migraine from which I thought I would die." Levy also includes descriptions of patients who endured wacky and often violent attempts at treatment, such as the 17th-century intellectual Lady Anne Conway, who allowed her brother to cut open her head. Levy asserts that such a preposterous-sounding cure simply reflects the victim's desperation. More>>
Levy guides us through a range of theories regarding the causes of migraine, including Sigmund Freud's laughable hypothesis that his daughter's first menstruation gave him "a migraine from which I thought I would die." Levy also includes descriptions of patients who endured wacky and often violent attempts at treatment, such as the 17th-century intellectual Lady Anne Conway, who allowed her brother to cut open her head. Levy asserts that such a preposterous-sounding cure simply reflects the victim's desperation. More>>
