Samuel Shem
Autor(a) de The House of God
About the Author
Obras por Samuel Shem
Napoleon's dinner ; and, Room for one woman 1 exemplar
Napoleon's Dinner 1 exemplar
Napoleon's dinner ; and, Room for one Woman 1 exemplar
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome legal
- Bergman, Stephen Joseph
- Data de nascimento
- 1944
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Locais de residência
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Educação
- Harvard University (MD)
University of Oxford (Balliol College) - Ocupações
- psychiatrist
novelist
playwright
essayist
activist - Prémios e menções honrosas
- Rhodes Scholar
Membros
Críticas
Listas
Prémios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 14
- Membros
- 1,948
- Popularidade
- #13,210
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Críticas
- 68
- ISBN
- 91
- Línguas
- 10
- Marcado como favorito
- 5
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)