Pain Studies

“A fascinating, totally seductive read!” —Eula Biss, author of Notes  from No Man’s Land: American Essays and On Immunity: An Inoculation

“A  book built of brain and nerve and blood and heart. . . . Irreverent and  astute. . . . Pain Studies will change how you think about living with a  body.” —Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck and Bowlaway

“A  thrilling investigation into pain, language, and Olstein’s own exile  from what Woolf called ‘the army of the upright.’ On a search path  through art, science, poetry, and prime-time television, Olstein aims  her knife-bright compassion at the very thing we’re all running from.  Pain Studies is a masterpiece.” —Leni Zumas, author of The Listeners and  Red Clocks

In this extended lyric essay, a poet mines her  lifelong experience with migraine to deliver a marvelously idiosyncratic  cultural history of pain—how we experience, express, treat, and  mistreat it. Her sources range from the trial of Joan of Arc to the  essays of Virginia Woolf and Elaine Scarry to Hugh Laurie’s portrayal of  Gregory House on House M.D. As she engages with science, philosophy,  visual art, rock lyrics, and field notes from her own medical adventures  (both mainstream and alternative), she finds a way to express the  often-indescribable experience of living with pain. Eschewing simple  epiphanies, Olstein instead gives us a new language to contemplate and  empathize with a fundamental aspect of the human condition.