Carlos Williams Recap

The last session of term witnessed a great discussion of two short stories (or were they prose poems?) by William Carlos Williams.

Robin introduced our texts by giving some fascinating backgound on Williams, from his polylingual New Jersey upbringing, to his medical training, his travels in Europe, and his friendship with figures such as Ezra Pound. As an MD, Williams practiced during the Depression in East Rutherford, particularly treating inhabitants of poor immigrant communities. Apparently he loved the opportunity medical encounters gave to hear people's stories (as do we!).

Daniel kicked off the discussion by reflecting on the uncomfortable sense of the doctor character's own feelings and responses to his patients conveyed in the two texts: his lack of control, in particular, appeared to be a new feature of the stories we have been discussing this term, and a reason why Daniel had chosen them to conclude our series of readings. We thought about this unease in relation to the ideas of empathy which have recurred throughout our meetings this term: are we to empathise with the emotions and psychological state of the doctor, just as he is asked to empathise with his patients?

Simon commented on the elision of the doctor's and writer's role(s) in these texts, and asked if these sit comfortably together? We thought back to previous considerations of the appropriate nature of the short story genre for writing about medicine, this time in relation to the taking, and writing up, of case histories. We also noted that Williams' choice of not including speech marks meant the narrative slipped between his words and thoughts, as they often merged together. One extraordinary passage towards the end of 'The Use of Force' complicated rage and reason, changing from 'I' to 'one'; from the enfuried exclamation 'damned little brat' to the rationalising 'It is social necessity'.

We thought about the how the tales were structured around moments of insight, most concretely in the violent revelation of the girl's diphtheria-ridden throat.

As in the Hemingway piece, we noted the choices of language made by Williams, particularly how he draws our attention to eyes and mouths in the texts. We discussed how his paediatrician's gaze seemed to inform the descriptions of the children in the stories: his narrator is very aware of the bodies of the often overtly animal creatures he is treating. Did this make for uneasy reading? I particularly loved the description of the pimply-faced girl's father as a 'cube'!

We concluded that the literary quality of this term's readings has been very high - and thanked Daniel again for his help with their selection. Hopefully next term's focus on Pynchon can deliver just as good a prognosis of the relationships between science and literature!