My three-day headache has been diagnosed as idiopathic trigeminal neuralgia, "idiopathic" in this instance signifying "nuke it from orbit and hope it doesn't come back." I am in favor of this plan, since I need more chronic facial pain like I need a literal hole in the head. In the meantime, I have spent a remarkable amount of time trying not to let my face freeze to a cold pack.
Mary Roberts Rinehart's K. (1915) is what used to be described as simon-pure melodrama right down to the last-minute twists and near-misses and nick-of-time revelations, but it's also a surprisingly detailed portrait of the nursing profession in the U.S. circa 1913–14, or at least surprisingly until I learned that Rinehart herself had graduated from what was then the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses in 1896 and was married to a doctor at the time of writing. The enigmatic title refers to the alias of one of the protagonists, who never does decide what name his assumed first initial should stand for: "Kenneth, King, Kerr—" He's the new lodger of a working-class boarding house who has obviously to the reader with the advantage of third person omniscient dropped out of his own life after some spectacular disgrace and I appreciate that unlike almost every instance of this trope I have encountered, no one on "the Street" ever thinks of him as mysterious, tragic, romantic, etc.; he is accepted so naturally as a clerk at the gas office and a jack of all trades around the house, "watch-dog, burglar-alarm, and occasional recipient of an apostle spoon in a dish of custard," that it is rather deflating to him to realize that he's seen as a placidly reliable character, a sort of universal older brother, especially by his co-protagonist for whom he has almost inevitably begun to carry a consciously hopeless torch. Because the plot kicks into gear when she begins her training as a probationer, the novel almost has the flavor of a school story, complete with rivals and romances and rites of passage like assisting at a first operation or witnessing—or almost causing—a first death, but as such it's reasonably mature. Medicine is presented as a sacred trust without letting the reader forget that sacred does not preclude exhausting, boring, upsetting, and not infrequently gross. I would award even more points to the book for realism if the romantic antagonist whose murderous jealousy derails several lives were not canonically half-Spanish. At least I find it hilarious that the other half is canonically New England, resulting in "Yankee shrewdness and capacity . . . complicated by occasional outcroppings of southern Europe, furious bursts of temper, slow and smouldering vindictiveness. A passionate creature, in reality, smothered under hereditary Massachusetts caution." Not everybody's from Boston, John. I found Rinehart through her much more famous detective novel Miss Pinkerton (1932) and its sequel, also medically-themed; I had been wondering some months ago about the trope of the butler who did it and apparently she can be credited with its invention. People interested in women writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, feel free to take note. Meanwhile, if you would like a decently idtastic romance-ish novel set in a teaching hospital right before World War I, K. has got you covered.
I can no longer remember who sent me this classical tweet, but I think it's funny.
Mary Roberts Rinehart's K. (1915) is what used to be described as simon-pure melodrama right down to the last-minute twists and near-misses and nick-of-time revelations, but it's also a surprisingly detailed portrait of the nursing profession in the U.S. circa 1913–14, or at least surprisingly until I learned that Rinehart herself had graduated from what was then the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses in 1896 and was married to a doctor at the time of writing. The enigmatic title refers to the alias of one of the protagonists, who never does decide what name his assumed first initial should stand for: "Kenneth, King, Kerr—" He's the new lodger of a working-class boarding house who has obviously to the reader with the advantage of third person omniscient dropped out of his own life after some spectacular disgrace and I appreciate that unlike almost every instance of this trope I have encountered, no one on "the Street" ever thinks of him as mysterious, tragic, romantic, etc.; he is accepted so naturally as a clerk at the gas office and a jack of all trades around the house, "watch-dog, burglar-alarm, and occasional recipient of an apostle spoon in a dish of custard," that it is rather deflating to him to realize that he's seen as a placidly reliable character, a sort of universal older brother, especially by his co-protagonist for whom he has almost inevitably begun to carry a consciously hopeless torch. Because the plot kicks into gear when she begins her training as a probationer, the novel almost has the flavor of a school story, complete with rivals and romances and rites of passage like assisting at a first operation or witnessing—or almost causing—a first death, but as such it's reasonably mature. Medicine is presented as a sacred trust without letting the reader forget that sacred does not preclude exhausting, boring, upsetting, and not infrequently gross. I would award even more points to the book for realism if the romantic antagonist whose murderous jealousy derails several lives were not canonically half-Spanish. At least I find it hilarious that the other half is canonically New England, resulting in "Yankee shrewdness and capacity . . . complicated by occasional outcroppings of southern Europe, furious bursts of temper, slow and smouldering vindictiveness. A passionate creature, in reality, smothered under hereditary Massachusetts caution." Not everybody's from Boston, John. I found Rinehart through her much more famous detective novel Miss Pinkerton (1932) and its sequel, also medically-themed; I had been wondering some months ago about the trope of the butler who did it and apparently she can be credited with its invention. People interested in women writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, feel free to take note. Meanwhile, if you would like a decently idtastic romance-ish novel set in a teaching hospital right before World War I, K. has got you covered.
I can no longer remember who sent me this classical tweet, but I think it's funny.
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