Realizing he was a member of a tangled (a favorite word of the author) group of transsexuals, James felt himself trapped in a conundrum of gender (he felt and considered himself female) versus sex (he was genotypically and phenotypically male). “To me gender is not physical at all but is altogether insubstantial; it is soul, perhaps, it is talent it is the essentialness of oneself” (p.25).  

After some fruitless interactions with the medical profession, Morris travels to Casablanca in the summer of 1972 to undergo sex-changing surgery and becomes Jan Morris. Unlike many if not most transsexuals, post-operatively Morris fared quite well emotionally and was quite happy with the change.  

Jan Morris’s writing is as humorous and eloquent as James Morris’s was. She describes how magazines like Rolling Stone, publishers like Random House, and thousands of readers have never cared what gender or sex was holding the pen; how life changed in clubs, restaurants, and in taxicabs, where Jan met the first man to kiss her, post surgery, “in a carnal way” (p.151). Morris records that “all I did was blush.” 

As the chronicle of one sensitive and highly literate man’s journey from manhood to womanhood, Conundrum offers much commentary on the states of mind of a transsexual, a highly polished writer undergoing the humoral, mental, emotional, and cultural changes of such surgery.  

Prior to surgery, Morris writes about feeling deprived of an identity: “I realize now that the chief cause of my disquiet was the fact that I had none. I was not to others what I was to myself. I did not conform to the dictionary’s definition–‘itself and not something else’ ” (p.40-41). All Morris wanted “was liberation, or reconciliation–to live as myself, to clothe myself in a more proper body, and achieve Identity at last” (p.104). It took courage but it was worth it and Conundrum reads like nothing more, and nothing less, than a successful odyssey of the sexual soul. 

Jan Morris died in 2020, aged 94. 

Jan Morris: Journalist, Historian, ‘Writer About Place’ – Faculty of English

Conundrum
Jan Morris 
New York Review of Books Classics, paperback 2006: 176 pages 
Originally published by Faber and Faber, London, 1974 

Web image by medhum

Literature mirrors the general culture. There has been a recent explosion of books in which AI is the central plot device moving the narrative forward to endings that range from a utopian fulfillment of human destiny to the catastrophic collapse of civilization and the annihilation of humankind. But AI infiltrated the literary space several decades ago. Philip Dick imagined a world in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? where cyborgs were being hunted down because of fear that they might take over the world. In 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, a robot named Hal murders nearly all the crew of a spaceship on a planetary mission because of a programming error. 

Speak by Louisa Hall is more recent addition to the AI library. But it was published several years before large language models became a routine tool to plan a vacation or write a letter of recommendation. Is it still worth reading in 2025? 

The novel is a composite narrative centered around five interwoven stories spanning the time period from 1663 to 2040. In the first narrative, a young Puritan girl who finds herself in an unwanted marriage, records her thoughts in a diary that she is writing on a treacherous ocean voyage to America. Fast forward to the 20^th century and we meet Alan Turing who is writing letters to the mother of young man to whom he was emotionally attached and who died prematurely. He is troubled by his inability at times to communicate with people. A decade later we meet Karl and Ruth Dettman, a couple whose families escaped Nazi Germany but under vastly different circumstances. The husband, Karl, is a computer scientist who has developed a program named MARY to enable computers to interact with humans. Ruth, his wife, is a historian who has built a career centered on the publication of old diaries like the one written by the young woman traveling to America. She is trying to convince Karl to expand the memory of his computer program and enrich it with more human material, but Karl stubbornly refuses because he is concerned about the power of his program to overwhelm its users if its database is expanded. Finally, we jump ahead to 2040, and we read the transcripts of the trial of Stephen Chinn, a man who is being prosecuted for the production of robots that are too life-like. Chinn is being accused of causing physical and psychological harm to the people who have used his robots and of weakening normal relationships between people. A young adolescent named Gaby, who was given a doll powered by a version of MARY, is one of his alleged victims. His own personal recollections are folded into the trial proceedings, as he tries to describe his intentions, justify his actions, and make amends for where they may have gone awry. 

Taking stock of our world today, there is clear evidence that AI can improve the day-to-day lot of people, make life more convenient and efficient, and promote better health outcomes. However, much of the current angst that permeates discussions of AI is focused on the potential economic and sociopolitical consequences. There is fear that systematic adoption of AI will lead to widespread loss of jobs and financial distress for people left behind. The generation of false data and uncontrolled dissemination of unfiltered information may, it is feared, foster social unrest and destabilize democratic institutions.  

All of these predictions, for good or for bad, center on the word “intelligence.” If it is defined as the creative use of information towards a specific goal– my definition, to be sure — then it exists along a gradient and there is not an opposing term. In that case, the mixed picture about the future of AI seems accurate. Humans can process information to both noble and destructive ends. If machines are provided information by humans, then it is likely that there will be worthy and flawed outcomes. It is not a reflection of the logical structures or neural networks that are built into us as humans or artificially placed into machines. It simply is the nature of intelligence. Information is agnostic and it can be processed in a limitless number of ways; there is no guarantee of what will happen when it is processed. 

On the other hand, if we center our predictions on the word “artificial,” there is an opposing term, namely “genuine.” Speak looks beyond AI as intelligence and forces us to think about its impact on interpersonal communication and interactions. The design of the robots that are being created in fiction and in our world of 2025 is steadily improving. The voices become more lifelike, the reactions more emotionally appropriate, the reactions more convincing. They display keen intelligence and manifest seeming empathy with their handlers. Like the artificial friend in Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishigura, the robots may even appear to have more feelings and awareness of the ever-changing psychological state of their owners than family members and friends. But it will always remain artificial. Speak forces us to ponder whether interactions between human beings have an element that cannot be programmed, that is not simply manipulation of information. It is that piece that accounts for the genuine nature of relationships between people and it is that component that is vital for human growth and maturation. The interconnected stories in Speak raise the concern that reliance on AI, in whatever embodied form it takes, to provide support and companionship may inevitably fail and leave damaged humans in its mechanical wake. The intelligence of AI may not be sufficient for humans to thrive. It remains difficult to put into words exactly what to call this additional component of human interaction. Thankfully, there is literature, and creative novels like Speak, to help us grapple with what it might be and to help us steer a course where AI is developed thoughtfully with full awareness of its limitations and potential for good and harm. 

SPEAK  
Louisa Hall 
EccoPress, New York 2016, 356 pp 
Web image by Medhum.org

There is nothing to read on the psych unit but a bulletin board listing the daily activities and some magazines. This makes Chihaya think about her relationship to books, which is a complex one. She muses that “it is every writer’s fear that our books will be the death of us” (p. 11) and humorously writes about how she once had a bookshelf that was so wobbly she worried it would topple over on her. However, the real damage that books inflict may be insidious. The author first began to read as an escape from her unhappy childhood, but she fears she now “love[s] books to a dangerous degree” (p. 20).  They have become her life to the extent that she does not know if she “would be anyone at all” (p.12) without them. A feature of her depression is that she has completely lost interest in reading. She half-seriously coins the diagnosis “bibliophobia” to describe her condition. It will take just the right book to cure her, and when she finds it, she begins to read again, and to heal.  

Over the course of Bibliophobia Chihaya tells us about the books that have been of vital importance to her, many of which she associates with relationships or with stages in her life. Eventually, she reads the DSM about her own psychiatric diagnosis, and she reads books that other people have written about their depression. Working with a therapist, she realizes she needs to move on, and she lets go of her academic career. By the end of Bibliophobia we learn that Chihaya has finally written a book, but it is not the one she was expecting to write. It is Bibliophobia.

Bibliophobia is an unusual hybrid of a book that is part literary criticism part memoir. The author has been influenced by numerous mental health memoirs including recent celebrated works by Donald Antrim, Esmé Weijun Wang, and George Scialabba.

The first chapter, the subsequent emotional journey of the author, and her conclusions all captured my attention. I must confess that much of the rest of this book interested me less for the simple reason that I had not read any of the books the author discusses in detail. I do not even think we have the same taste in literature. However, this may not prove to be a stumbling block to potential readers who are fans of Toni Morrison, Anne Carson or Anne of Green Gables, or who just love reading about books.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, stigma around mental health is common in Asian American communities. One praiseworthy attribute of Bibliophilia is how it calls attention to the challenges that these groups experience in accessing care. Chihaya, was raised by a Japanese father and a Japanese Canadian mother who “did not believe in the concept of mental health; everyone was either fine or just complaining” (p. 49). Growing up with the message that depression is “not for the children of immigrants [but] something that happen[s] to white people in independent films” (p. 7) it goes without saying that Chihaya cannot bring her symptoms to her parents’ attention. Filled with shame, it takes her many years until she can no longer ignore them. Fortunately, Chihaya has given us a book filled with insights that one hopes will inspire others to seek help.

Bibliophobia
Sarah Chihaya
Random House, New York, 2025, 214 pages

References:
https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/asian-american-patients
Web image from Wikicommons.

The story begins abruptly. A woman named June is driving westward alone in her car, destination unknown. She is trying desperately to escape the small town near Litchfield, Connecticut where she grew up, after the funerals for four people who have died in a lethal housefire — her ex-husband Adam, her boyfriend Luke, her daughter Lolly, and her daughter’s fiancé Will. The tragedy is compounded by the timing of the fire, the night before the scheduled wedding of June’s daughter.  

In a format that is increasingly common in current literature, the story unfolds from the unique perspective of people connected in various ways to those who perished and those who survived the disaster. The gallery of characters includes June, Lolly, Luke’s mother Lydia, the lesbian couple who own the seaside hotel where June hides out, the Native American woman who cleans the rooms in the hotel, Will’s parents, and a fidgety, socially awkward adolescent who has an unhealthy fixation on Lydia. Each chapter is told from the vantage point of one person, in their voice, in their thoughts. The narrative is in the first person except for the chapters that recount June and Lydia’s experience. There is minimal dialogue, mostly stream of consciousness story telling. Insight emerges from the action. The chapters weave together seamlessly, and you feel yourself drawn more and more into this microcosm of people struggling to make sense of a senseless tragedy. It would be a category error to call the novel a page turner. But there is a profound mystery at the core of the story, an appreciation of the ineffable wonder at how our lives play out and the complexity of our interactions with one another. 

This haunting book incorporates many classic themes that characterize literature that can engage us – the pain of the sudden loss of loved ones, loneliness, regret for mistakes made and actions not taken. It  echoes Tolstoy’s notion that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Were it even simply a tale of coping with heartbreak and learning from life’s catastrophes, this would be a notable book. But there is an unexpected element that emerges from the prose that raises this novel to another level and makes it truly worth reading. 

Amid the grief and wreckage of personal stories, June and Lydia’s stories gradually move to the narrative center. Each one is wracked with guilt and remorse for ill-thought-out actions that caused a loved one profound emotional pain and hurt. Faced with death of the loved one, they feel powerless to get past  their feelings of worthlessness and shame. But as the story gradually unfolds and moves inexorably to its conclusion, each woman becomes more acutely aware of what she has done and is willing to accept responsibility. This self-knowledge culminates in a moment of genuine forgiveness and a sense of rebirth, 

In the Jewish tradition, forgiveness for sins must be preceded by a verbal recognition of wrongdoing, regret for what has been done, and a public resolve to avoid doing the same thing again if the opportunity to sin presents itself in the future. But there is a wrinkle depending on the nature of the sin. If it is directed to God, confession and repentance are enough to wipe the slate clean. But for sins committed against people, confession and repentance alone are insufficient. True forgiveness and closure are not achieved until forgiveness is granted by the person who was injured. Did You Ever Have a Family? describes and captures this interpersonal healing process in lyrical prose. Moreover, the sense of rebirth that animates the climax of the novel recapitulates the Jewish notion that a person who achieves genuine repentance after committing a sin is a new person, completely different than the person who committed the crime.  

There have been recent books like A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet that create a storyline that incorporates biblical elements. Did you ever have a family?’ is different. The architecture of the novel and its human voices are unequivocally modern. But the deeper structure has a profoundly religious sensibility; it grapples with spiritual themes and ideas normally taken up in non-secular settings. The book is infused with a heartfelt intensity that is unusual in contemporary fiction. I’m sure the author would be gratified to know that his book has beautifully articulated the regenerative power of forgiveness in a manner that transcends the bounds of plain fiction.  

Did You Ever Have a Family? 
Bill Clegg 
Reviewed by Howard Trachtman 
Simon & Schuster, Inc 
Published 2015 
Paperback version, Scout Press, 2016, pp291 
Web Photo by Norbert Buduczki

Alive: Our Bodies and the Richness and Brevity of Existence by Gabriel Weston 

Boston: David R. Godine, 2025, 304 pages 
ISBN 9781567928235 

The physician experience, medical history, motherhood, anatomy, and worries about her diseased mitral valve are tenderly sutured together by ENT surgeon Weston in her exploration of “the poetry of the body.” In thirteen chapters, she eloquently contemplates “the strange, unbridgeable gap that exists between the body science describes and the one each of us is living inside right this moment” (p194). In describing the anatomy of bones, brain, breasts, genitals, gut, heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, skin, and womb, Weston writes with a wit and intense curiosity reminiscent of popular science writer Mary Roach. But the book’s splendor arises from its attention to the art of doctoring. Weston notes how good physicians require a kind of “bifocal vision” that allows them to see the generalities of the human body but also the unique details of an individual patient. She extols empathy and elevates vulnerability: “We are not separable from those we care for, just as our strength is not separable from our vulnerability” (p263). Melding science and sentiment, mixing professional life with personal life, Weston enlivens anatomy and pays homage to the physician-patient relationship.  

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller 

London: Sceptre, 2024, 384 pages 
ISBN 9781529354270 

Andrew Miller’s remarkable 1997 debut novel Ingenious Pain chronicles the complex life of an 18^th century highly skilled English doctor incapable of feeling pain. Twenty-seven years and many novels (Oxygen, Pure, The Optimists) later, Miller’s latest book spotlights a main character who also happens to be an English physician – but this flawed human being hurts (especially emotionally). Eric Parry is a 36-year-old country doctor having an extramarital affair with a married woman while his wife Irene is pregnant. Next door to their cottage is a farm owned by Bill Simmons and his pregnant wife Rita who suffers from mental illness and enjoys reading science fiction. It is winter (December, 1962 – January, 1963) and for a time the rural community is paralyzed by a brutal blizzard. Happy endings are in short supply here. One of the pregnant women has a miscarriage while sitting on the toilet. Characters get injured. Some patients die. Eric’s infidelity is exposed. Still, compassion and empathy occasionally sprout amidst the bleakness and the cold. Irene is cognizant that her husband’s work is hard as he “had to deal with people’s suffering all day” (p55). Eric excels at examining patients with a manner that “calmed” them. Secrets, loneliness, belonging, complicated personal relationships, and poor decision-making are essential elements of the plot. The story asks readers to contemplate whether virtuousness is a necessary requirement to be a “good doctor.” 

Doc or Quack: Science and Anti-Science in Modern Medicine by Sander L. Gilman 

London: Reaktion Books, 2025, 320 pages 
ISBN 9781836390152 

Bloodletting and purging (“heroic medicine”) employed for a wide array of diseases. Laetrile (a chemical present in apricot seeds) used for treating cancer. Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin prescribed for COVID-19. Spanning centuries, the list of wacky, ineffective, and sometimes dangerous remedies for illness is quite lengthy. In this standout history of scientific medicine from the mid-19^th century to the present, Gilman navigates “the ever-shifting boundary between good medicine and quackery” (p15). He reviews the rise of allopathic medicine that resulted from “following the science” as discovery and knowledge migrated from the laboratory to the bedside. He writes about the model of the physician-healer, the placebo effect (along with the morality of deception), superstitions (of both doctors and patients), and the faddish nature of medical practice. Gilman is rightly concerned about physicians experiencing burnout and patients feeling disconnected from their doctors in truncated office visits. He wonders if empathy and efficacy can coexist in contemporary healthcare. Three “case studies” are presented: peptic ulcer disease, the development of ophthalmic surgery, and acupuncture for back pain. A thoughtful study of historically “good” and “bad” medicine and the occasional blurring between the two. 

Additional recommended books published in 2025: 

The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains
by Pria Anand 

The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker
by Suzanne O’Sullivan 

Web photo by Bermix Studio 

Ingrid (played by Julianne Moore) finds out that her good friend from long ago has terminal cancer. Martha (played by Tilda Swinton) still lives near enough that Ingrid can visit her in short order, and she does. For Martha, Ingrid’s visit is welcome and well-timed; she is looking for someone to accompany her on her journey to her last breath. The plan is set. On the day that seems right to her, Martha will ingest a drug that will release her from a cancerous life promising more suffering. She asks Ingrid to be the one accompanying her, and only asks that she be in the room next door. Ingrid agrees. 

They decamp to a place in the hills Martha rents. Ingrid takes a room downstairs instead of the room next to Martha’s, perhaps as the first visible sign of some pressure on the relationship and the idea. While many days pass when Martha is not ready, Ingrid does what she can to put Martha and herself at ease by maintaining some activities of daily living. They respond to each other as close friends do. Nevertheless, tensions threaten the facade of normality. Ingrid seeks activities away from the house, further yet from the room next door, and a friend warns about dangers she could encounter from her involvement in Martha’s death. The way they talk and respond to each other gets more stilted and wary up to the day Martha finally takes the pill, a day Ingrid is not in the room next door, or in the room downstairs, or in the house.  

That’s not the end, though. Ingrid returns not long after Martha dies, spends time with and offers succor to her daughter, and then defends Martha and herself to the police at great risk. The answer to Almodóvar’s question could be that these reconstituted relationships can endure, however bumpy and sad they may become along the way.  

The Room Next Door
Director: Pedro Almodóvar 
Cast: Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton 
Sony Pictures Classics: 2024
RT: 1hr 47minutes 
Web image from Sony Picture Classics

Cyrus aspires to be a poet but is drowning in self-pity and drug use. He wants more than anything to achieve renown and martyrdom and to die after having made a lasting mark in the world. Interwoven with these tragic human circumstances are antic elements that collide with this depressing narrative. The novel opens abruptly with a humorous but disconcerting encounter between Cyrus, who is working as a surrogate patient in an introduction to medicine class, and a student, who is clearly in the early stages of her education. Cyrus is having a bad day and cynically takes on the role of the difficult patient, nearly driving the student to tears. There is a zany episode when Cyrus and a friend take on a home maintenance and wood chopping job for a man who lives alone and who monitors their work wearing only his underwear.  

Dream sequences in which Cyrus receives guidance from figures ranging from Kareem Abdul Jabbar to a thinly disguised, now President Trump materialize without warning. An uncle, his mother’s older brother, passes through the story several times appearing as a figure draped in a black hooded cape and riding on horseback across the blood-drenched Iran-Iraq war battlefields. His mission is to reassure the dying soldiers that they will ascend to paradise. Yet, despite these disparate elements, the book has a powerful coherence and momentum. One of the most striking features of the book is its extraordinarily imaginative similes– “he was skinny in a scrawny way, not like a runner but like a mathematician who forgets to eat,” “the middle school teacher… offered him a racial slur, like a juicy orange they might peel together and share.” These phrases demand that you slow down the pace of your reading and take note of the author’s creativity.  

Engagement with language and its communicative limitations emerges as a key theme of Martyr!. Cyrus comments frequently on the arbitrariness of language and the terrifying consequences that can arise from the words we use. Akbar embeds this idea in his writing by implying that plain words alone are inadequate to capture the essence of things, and the only reliable way to convey meaning to readers is by creating vivid and arresting comparisons. The plot of the book takes off when Cyrus is encouraged by a friend to go to the Brooklyn Museum and visit a featured exhibit, DEATH-SPEAK. It consists of an artist who is dying of cancer sitting on a chair and talking with the visitors about death during the final weeks of her life. An unanticipated bond is quickly established between the artist named Orkideh and Cyrus. He feels compelled to return and speak with her over the next four days. Their conversation is genuine and moving. There is more to the artist and her art than meets Cyrus’ eye, and those unexpected twists drive the story to its blazing finish.  

What is one to make of this wholly original and emotionally charged novel? I will restrict myself to three thoughts that have had staying power after finishing the book a month ago. First, as mentioned above, Martyr! raises provocative questions about the limitations of language and our ability to communicate with one another. Cyrus (and Akbar) questions the capacity of words alone to express meaning, as if each of us has our own private language. If we can firmly ground our language with references to concrete, real life experiences, which is precisely what Akbar does with the beautiful and jarring similes that are interwoven into the entire book, then we may be able to convey meaning. That Akbar can introduce such a recondite idea, a variant of playing language games, into a best-selling novel is a feat worth noting.  

Second, there is a yearning to be healed that drives Cyrus’ quest. Martyrdom is the outer expression, but it is a quest for meaning that is the true driving force that motivates Cyrus to take healthy action in the novel. He attends a group therapy program and has a tough-minded supervisor to help him detox from his drug use. Ultimately, it is the new awareness that Cyrus gains about his parents that enables him to achieve psychological equanimity and peace of mind.  

Finally, what is the martyrdom that Cyrus longs for? He is not looking to wrap himself with explosives, kill the infidels, and gain entry to paradise. One could say that what he so desperately wants is lasting fame and renown for an act or artistic creation that will be seen as unique and cherished, that will survive after him, and that will keep his name eternally alive. The Book of Martyrs, a fictional collection of poems written by Cyrus that are interspersed in the text, could conceivably represent this hoped-for act of martyrdom. However, the ending of the novel suggests that Akbar may have a less explosive and more intimate notion of what martyrdom means. The knowledge that Cyrus gains over the course of the novel and his interactions with Orkideh spur him to finally achieve the martyrdom he seeks. His ultimate fate on the final page is actually a bit murky. But the vision that one is left with is that Cyrus has indeed achieved a life of meaning because it is a life of meaningful interpersonal connections.  

Martyr! 
Kaveh Akbar 
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024, pp 332 
Web image by Levi Meir Clancy