The Whistlers' Room: Stories and Essays

Richard Selzer is one of America's most accomplished stylists, a physician turned writer in the grand tradition that stretches from Chekhov to William Carols Williams to Oliver Sachs. As Iliana Semmler notes in her introduction, "over fifteen years ago [he] substituted the pen for the scalpel, the desk for the operating table, his carrel in Yale's Sterling Library for the Operating Room, [but] the consciousness of the physician remains a guiding force in all his work.". The Whistlers' Room collects twenty-four pieces, from diaries and memoirs to essays on painting and sculpture, from essays on travel to translation and fiction. The title piece recounts the compassion and camaraderie between three soldier-patients in what was dubbed the Whistlers' Room: "Each had been shot in the throat and sustained a more or less identical wound, destruction of the larynx." The whole book is an exhilarating tour, led by a remarkable imagination.