Samuel Shem

Shem’s darkly comic sequel to The House of God starts out at rock-bottom (literally!) and segues into flashback, reuniting most of the characters from his first novel. Unfortunately, that flashback format means that several major events have been revealed up front – a technique that tends to vitiate their emotional impact for the reader.

The backbone of the novel has the House of God crew reuniting to do battle against the corporate forces sweeping through modern medicine, emphasizing profit over all else and creating “doctor as adversary [whose] ‘work’ was the computer.” There’s a kind of ‘Catch-22’ flavor here as narrator Roy Basch, the Fat Man, the Irish cops Gilheeny and Quick (possibly the most interesting and certainly the most enjoyable characters in the book), and assorted other subversive teammates do battle against the hated computerized records system, bean-counters who want them to monetize medicine, and an egomaniacal surgeon who’s out to defeat Death, no matter how many test subjects he has to kill to do it.

Along the way, Shem takes healthy swipes at the general screen culture that has overtaken virtually all modern life. In his words, the iPhone (iPad, iMac, etc.) becomes the “I”-phone. What seems at first to just be a snarky swipe, or perhaps a mere authorial affectation becomes a way to make a deeper point about the shift away from community in our personal and professional lives. He also has his narrator (who, in this universe, “wrote” The House of God) ‘fess up to having edited reality in a few of the cases he cited in his book, explaining that at first he felt guilty about it, but ultimately decided that, since it was his universe, he could “edit” reality for a more satisfying outcome.

Which brings us to the pie-in-the-sky conclusion of the characters’ rage-against-the-machine odyssey. In Shem’s “edited” reality, common sense, dedication, and teamwork do bring about the fall of Big Med, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance, and everybody (well, almost everybody) gets to live happily ever after.

As poet e.e. cummings told us, “…there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go”. Shem has definitely gone there, and this sudden about-face from blackest of black humor to unicorns and rainbows is a jarring resolution that not all readers will find satisfying.… (mais)

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Shem-Il-faut-quon-se-parle--Reconstruire-un-dialo...

> IL FAUT QU'ON SE PARLE, (Re)construire un dialogue épanouissant pour le couple, par Samuel Shem, Janet Surrey, Traduit de l'américain par Larry Cohen - Ed. InterEditions. — "Chéri, il faut qu'on se parle" dit la femme et instantanément l'homme invoque une tâche urgente…
Les ruptures de communication dans le couple sont souvent dues à une méconnaissance des différences de mode de communication des femmes et des hommes. La femme, par exemple, recherche le dialogue alors que l'homme préfère le silence.
Le livre aborde, sous un angle novateur, la résolution de cette non-communication entre sexes opposés : reconnaître les préférences et les peurs de chacun en matière relationnelle pour un engagement plus actif de l'un envers l'autre. Le couple ferait, ainsi, un pas décisif quand l'homme et la femme acquièrent, ensemble, le sentiment de constituer un "Nous" qui les dépasse pour mieux les réunir.
Ce "Nous" leur donne l'espace pour s'ouvrir aux expériences et à la personnalité de l'autre, pour comprendre son point de vue et le valoriser dans la réciprocité.
—Infos Yoga, (34), Sept./Oct. 2001, (p. 39)… (mais)

Roy Basch, el narrador y protagonista, y sus compañeros: Chuck, un negro que siempre lleva en su maletín una petaca de whisky; Runt, judío y muy psicoanalizado, y Potts, un emigrado del sur son brillantes licenciados de las mejores facultades de medicina, que han conseguido ser aceptados para hacer su año de prácticas en uno de los más prestigiosos hospitales, la Casa de Dios. Y en este año, que muy pronto se parecerá a la versión de una obra del marqués de Sade por los hermanos Marx, se multiplican los episodios de aprendizaje de la medicina pero también del horror, la impostura, el cientificismo más cruel e ineficaz y, sobre todo, de lo ineludible de la enfermedad y la muerte.… (mais)

Abandoned this on my first attempt and finally picked this up again after close to 20 years (gosh!). Not sure why I couldn't finish it then, as I found it quite readable. Dr Roy Basch is a first-year resident at Mount Misery. As he rotates through the different disciplines, getting mired in the technicalities of psychiatry and mental health, he loses touch with his patients and became depressed himself. Only by remembering that he just needs to be human and to connect with them, did he regain himself and his love. The story is good and Shem can write. It could be trimmed though as Basch's experiences in the different disciplines became something like a movie on repeat.… (mais)