The first thing I noticed about this book, The Wounded Stroyteller by Arthur Frank was how the topics of modernism and postmodernism were following me everywhere. The day I started reading this book a teacher in another class of mine was asking us the difference between modernism and post-modernism regarding art. I felt foolish because as a senior art major I should definitely know the answer to that question but after being plagued by it through this entire book luckily I’ll never forget it. To sum it up, I think modernism could be described as the absence of decoration or excess. Form follows function. Postmodernism came about as a reaction against modernism and embraced ornamental and attractive elements again. The medical version that Frank describes is similar to the artistic approach. Frank says modernism occurs when technical medical expertise overtakes the bodily experience of illness. Postmodernism is then when ill people realize more is involved in their experience than the medical story they can tell. The similarity between the art and medical world is that humanized detail is subtracted from modernism and again restored with postmodernism.

I feel when Frank first starts describing “The Remission Society” he is describing what Wall talks about in the last chapter of his book Pain: The Science of Suffering. There is really nothing being done about the people in pain. Scientists and pharmaceutical companies are researching for the cure to ailments to help prevent pain, and Doctors and Surgeons are taking care of injuries, but those with chronic pain after seeing a doctor and before being cured by a miracle drug, they are left isolated. These are the people in the remission society.

I wish the book actually told the patient’s stories instead of just analyzing them. It’s a disheartening topic because it really makes me think how fragile life is and puts it into perspective. Some parts I found interesting were the breakdown of the archetypes of the stories in the Restitution Narrative, and how Frank describes an ill body as similar to a car breaking down. The chapter I loved in the book was the Chaos Narrative. I feel like my life is a chaos narrative! I can relate to the parts about chaos the best. It made me think about Abu Ghraib. When we make a judgment about what those soldiers did we are creating a Chaos Narrative. “Chaos Narrative often begins with the listener asserting how in such circumstances he would find a way out.” If we fell in, we could get out.

I think there was a lesson for me reading this book. Frank talks a lot about the voice of the person with illness. How the voice is lost or gained or how it is taken away from the ill person. My little brother has been suffering with some stomach illness for more than 3 years. He’s the leading valedictorian in his 11th grade class but he’s a procrastinator and since academics come so easily to him he doesn’t have to try. He hardly ever goes to school and probably misses about 3 days of school every week due to his stomach problems. He’s been to doctors and specialists but they don’t know what is plaguing him so they can’t diagnose him and therefore don’t know how to help him. For the last 3 years I have been a brat of a sister always making comments about him missing school because he could get away with it just because he was so smart. That he was using his stomach problems to his advantage and he didn’t need to miss so much school, he was just being lazy. Honestly I don’t know what the f was my problem but I’m glad I read this book because it gave me an epiphany. This whole book defends and explains the character of the ill person, talking about how society doesn’t take their illness seriously if it doesn’t have a clear diagnosis and if the illness lingers, those in the remission society are belittled. I feel ashamed to admit that I was doing exactly this to my brother, someone whom I should have never condemned no matter the circumstances. I have to thank Arthur Frank for making me realize this.