Tooker depicted waiting for a more specifically governmental bureaucracy in his painting, “The Government Bureau.” In that painting, the waiting people are reproduced several times to emphasize their anonymity, and the multiple bureaucrats peer out from frosted windows with only their eyes and noses visible — bringing to mind the concept of the “medical gaze” promulgated by the French philosopher,  Michel Foucault.

In another Tooker painting, “Ward,” he renders patients’ anonymity and a sense of abandonment in the hospital setting–with government bureaucracy invoked by the American flags hanging on the wall.

Image Credit
The Waiting Room, George Tooker, 1959. Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Image used for educational and critical commentary purposes.

George Tooker documentary videos from Columbus Museum

Soto explores his uncertain status in relation to his family, and to the larger society in “You’ve Gone Too Far.” Detailing the “evolution” of his siblings and cousins, who “were no longer Mexican rednecks,” but “held down jobs” and “stopped jamming parking meters for free time,” Soto describes how his family nevertheless feels uncomfortable about him. “My family feared that I had evolved too far.” Drunken Christmas horseplay with his brothers reveals their distaste and distrust of his intellectualism and sophisticated clothes. “They tore my book in half, / and stripped me of my Italian belt.” Only when they have succeeded in making him sick/drunk do they accept him (at least temporarily) back into the family fold. The poem illustrates well the difficulties that can arise when one member of a family elects to live life differently from the rest yet wants to maintain a relationship with its members. The situation has resonance for the children of immigrants, for children who are more educated than their parents, or for anyone who has chosen a life unfamiliar to family or friends.  

“TV in Black and White” focuses on the role of television (in the 1950s/1960s) in shaping, reflecting, and failing to reflect American society. Soto remembers his childhood in which “[we] were sentenced to watch / the rich on TV …”. Sitcom characters played golf, ate steak, and dressed fashionably (the Donna Reed Show, Ozzie and Harriet). “While he swung / we hoed / Fields flagged with cotton . . .”  

Now life is for many relatively luxurious, “Piano lessons for this child, / Braces for that one — “ “But if the electricity / fails in this town, / a storefront might / be smashed /” “and if someone steps out / with a black-and-white TV, / it’s because we love you Donna, / we miss you Ozzie.”  

Soto’s critique is still relevant today. The ubiquity of television and streaming, even in low-income households, confers enormous power on the images and narratives presented. Now there are many more options for viewers of different cultural and economic backgrounds. Yet the dominant culture still exerts a major influence. The gap between representation and reality continues to be an important source of social dissatisfaction and unrest. 

Gary Soto 
https://garysoto.com/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gary-soto#tab-poems

Mexicans Begin Jogging
Online: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/by-gary-soto/  
New and Selected Poems, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995, p. 51

You’ve Gone Too Far 
Published in Junior College, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1997, p.24

TV in Black and White 
New and Selected Poems, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995, p.50

Web image by Jr Korpa 

In this poem of high irony, 21 stanzas of couplets brilliantly spin out stereotypes of Indigenous people promulgated by white American culture. Among the stereotypes that Alexie develops: the tragic Indian; Indian women as sexual objects for white men; Indian men secretly desirable to white women; Indians as violent, alcoholic, childlike, mystical,” and members of a “horse culture.” But in addition, Alexie emphasizes how American whites have co-opted Indian culture: “white people must carry an Indian deep inside themselves” until finally, “all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.” The poem is a painful reminder of how the United States has at one and the same time decimated indigenous people and their culture while exploiting those people and that culture for its own gain. It is a commentary on stereotyping, loss of identity, and loss of a people.

Sherman Alexie is a poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and film writer. He is a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indigenous person and grew up on a reservation in Washington state. His work focuses on relationships between Indigenous people and white Americans and on life within a white power structure. Alexie’s writing is consistently humorous and ironic.

How to Write the Great American Indian Novel
Sherman Alexie
https://fallsapart.com

Source The Summer of Black Widows, pp. 94-95
Publisher Hanging Loose Press
Edition 1996
Place Published Brooklyn, New York
Alternate Source Native American Songs and Poems, pp. 28-29
Alternate Publisher Dover Thrift Editions
Alternate Edition 1996
Alternate Editors Brian Swann
Place Published New York

A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (Litmed).
Web image created by Medhum.org

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For more than twenty years, Dr. K worked in a hot town in the Middle East yet never got to know or understand its people. His only friend was a troubled hospital anesthetist, Biju. Dr. K was employed by the local hospital and assigned to the Accident and Emergency department. The hospital administrator, Sir Farhad (a man Dr. K feared and revered) was an enigmatic figure of authority. Dr. K was obsessed with accumulating wealth. When Farhad offered him an opportunity to earn extra money, Dr. K had no qualms accepting the new part-time position: punishment-surgeon. He would supervise criminal sentences requiring physical mutilation that were imposed by a judge. 

Biju sarcastically told his friend, “You are at the cutting edge of your profession, Dr. K” (111). Yet there was no humor or humanity at presiding over the amputation of the hands of a father-son team of thieves or a maid convicted of stealing jewelry who underwent a similar clinical maiming. The hospital routinely accepted these “punishment cases” referred from the Corrections department and constructed a special operating theatre on the top floor for these “special ops.” Over a decade, Dr. K figured his involvement in this injurious punishment amounted to at least twenty cases.  

Raucous Biju gets accused and convicted of stealing drugs from the hospital. His penalty was removal of a hand. Dr. K pleaded on behalf of Biju with the hospital administrator but to no avail. Dr. K was not convinced of Biju’s guilt and would not participate in the amputation of his friend’s hand. Dr. K resigned his post as punishment-surgeon and eventually settled in England with plenty of money for a comfortable albeit lonely life.  

This disturbing and at times dastardly story displays more than a slight hint of Franz Kafka’s influence including the brutal application of “justice” and a byzantine bureaucracy. Even the physician-narrator’s nickname, Dr. K, appears to be a nod to Kafka.  

The novel illustrates the personal and professional downward spiral that can occur when empathy and morality are subjugated to the pursuit of wealth and status. The story raises troubling questions about the participation of doctors in the legal system’s punishment of criminals.  

The reliability of the narrator is tenuous. He may be in denial or perhaps his memory has grown fragile and corrupted. Remorse seems mostly absent. The story warns of the preponderance of lies we tell – to oneself and to others. Dr. K will not be mistaken for a model doctor or a good man. He has participated in hideous acts of cruelty, been an absent father, and placed the acquisition of money as his main priority. The opening line of the novel is a blunt confession and a succinct conclusion: “I did it for money” (3).

Tell Her Everything
Mirza Waheed
Melville House, Brooklyn, NY, 2022: 234 pages 
A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. 
Web image by Medhum.org

Book Launch at the Lahore Literary Festival: 

Dégas’ brilliant rendering of perspective pulls the viewer into the mystery of what has taken place in what appears to be a woman’s bedroom. At the foot of the single-width bed, a coat is thrown over the metal bedpost frame. In the right foreground a bearded man leans against a closed door. His shadow looms behind him, large against the door. His shadow is generated by the single small lamp set upon a small round table near the center of the room. On the floor next to the table lies a piece of cloth or clothing (said to be a corset, p.674 of reference below). 

Turned, bent away from the man, partially kneeling on the floor at the other side of the room, is a young woman whose left shoulder and upper back are bare. The short sleeve of her white dress (nightgown?) hangs off her shoulder. She clutches to her body a blanket or drape. In contrast to the man, who stands in semidarkness, the woman’s back is bathed in the light of the nearby lamp. 

Clothing strewn on the floor and the looming man posted against a door suggest an assault. Although early 20th century critics did indeed perceive the painting as depicting the aftermath of a rape, that interpretation is not a foregone conclusion. The Philadelphia Museum of Art notes that Dégas referred to this work as “my genre picture” (a picture showing everyday life). The museum states further that “an annotation in a notebook used by Degas in this period provides a clue as to his intentions: ‘Work a great deal on nocturnal effects, lamps, candles, etc. The fascinating thing is not always to show the source of light but rather its effect.’ ” For another discussion of this painting, see Body, Place, and Self in 19th-Century Painting, by Susan Sidlauskas (Cambridge University Press, 2000). 

Web image from wikicommons

Actor Clark Middleton wrote this autobiographical dramatic monologue in collaboration with Robert Knopf. Stricken with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at age four, Middleton enacts his early painful experience — painful physically and emotionally. He takes us through an adolescence complicated by physical difference, his interaction with medical professionals over the years, and his craving to become an actor. Middleton struggles with the medical establishment, the pain and humor of coming-of-age, and ultimate self acceptance. Eventually, he was able to have both hip replacement surgery and a career in theater and film. The play is funny, poignant, and instructive.

Miracle Mile was performed in New York City in Fall, 1997 at Theater Row. The New York Times review called the play, “an enriching chronicle of a man who refuses to let the world take him at face value.” Middleton performed his monologue at New York University School of Medicine and at other institutions. Clips of a videotape of the theater performance are available at this web site.

Archive Videos from the Play

Actor Information
Clark Middleton (actor/author) performed MIRACLE MILE Off-Broadway in the fall of 1997. He has appeared in Sam Shephard’s CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS as well as Mr. Shephard’s CHICAGO at the Signature Theatre Company. Clark was in William Hoffman’s AFTER THE ORCHARD and performed MIRACLE MILE at the Invaluable Cape Cod Theater Project. He began his professional career performing with the late Geraldine Page in productions of THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT, PARADISE LOST, and VIVAT VIVAT REGINA. Since that time he has appeared in more than 40 NYC productions, most notably at the New York Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theatre, LaMaMa and Circle Rep, where he appeared with Olympia Dukakis in THE HOPE ZONE. In NYC Clark has directed LONE STAR, OUR DALY BREAD, DOMINO COURTS, CALL IT CLOVER and KIDNAPPED. He also directed MARVIN’S ROOM at The Wayside Theatre in Virginia. Clark can be seen in the films BAIL JUMPER, STORIES FROM NEW YORK, THE CONTENDERS and DON’T SHOOT DARLING. Clark plays the forensics expert Ellis on NBC-TV’s LAW & ORDER. He is a native of Tucson, Arizona and a member of both the Lab Theater Company and the 42nd Street Workshop.

Clark died on October 4, 2020. He was 63 years old.

Director Michael Warren Powell
Leading Actors Clark Middleton
Video Courtesy of Michelle Bouchard
Original Date of Entry 07/12/06

An earlier version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (Litmed).

Web Photo by Alex Radelich