The Exact Location of the Soul Book

Over three decades, Richard Selzer has brought his skills as a surgeon to the page, wrestling powerful descriptions of pain and deliverance into words. The Exact Location of the Soul gathers representative writings from the whole of his career, including set pieces like the four-part "Letter to a Young Surgeon" and frequently anthologised essays on such delicate matters as delivering the news of a death to loved ones (and what happens to the corpse afterward). Death is a constant theme in these essays, for "only in literature do the dead have a voice." Selzer has a marked talent for removing some of the mystery and fear from what is, after all, an inevitable process. He is also superb at describing such routine events of the surgical theatre as the scrubbing of hands, the proper and improper functioning of blood and organs, and the instantaneous decisions that a doctor must make in the course of a normal day. Selzer's style is often ornate--"What heartbroken psoriatic, surveying his embattled skin," he writes, "would not volunteer for an un-anaesthetized flaying could it but rid him of his pink sequins, his silver spangles?"--and not to every taste, but his gentle reflections on human frailty afford a revealing view of the practice of medicine, which Selzer clearly loves. "Say what you will about writing," he notes, "there is no more thrilling an achievement than the successful completion of a difficult surgical dissection." --Gregory McNameeRead More