NONFICTION
18 writers, 18 views on the complexities of anorexia
At first blush, it’s a brilliant idea.
Why not explore, through behind-the-curtain personal stories, the problem that is anorexia nervosa? An illness that spans generations and cultures, and yet remains so very elusive a subject — little talked about, less understood.
“Many people justifiably find this illness very hard to understand,” writes editor Kate Taylor in the introduction to “Going Hungry.” “It appears at once so conventional and so strange: After all, most women wish they were thinner or worry about getting fat, but very few would starve themselves to the point of severe discomfort or death.”
And it’s an absolute fact that the collection of 18 writers rounded up here — most of them women, as might be anticipated — is first-rate: Joyce Maynard, for starters, and then Jennifer Egan and Francine du Plessix Gray, Louise Gluck, and more. Taylor, the editor, is a culture reporter for the New York Sun and has written for the New Yorker.
So we can’t quibble with the who’s who of the book. Nor with the quality of the writing, which is, as one would expect, given the contributors’ list, almost uniformly excellent. These women writers convey in personal, hauntingly told narratives the unique combination of physical and psychological suffering and deprivation that is anorexia: the wily, Protean illness in which one’s body wastes away, even as the mind continues to play tricks with self-image and satiation.
And yet. Something gives one pause, here, even from the very first pages.
After absorbing the collection slowly, in small chunks, it becomes clear to the reader where the problem lies.
By putting the story of anorexia in the hands of such marvelous, evocative writers, the disease itself becomes — it’s a sad shock to realize — almost attractive.
Writer after writer describes the spell of the disease, how it draws you in, seductively, with the idea of control: every woman’s — and girl’s — secret fantasy. Techniques for wasting are described in pitiless detail; the lightheaded, airy feeling that comes with starvation is portrayed like the Sirens of myth.
These women are, again, good writers. So good they perhaps put out there a little too much. So good they make the allure of anorexia plain: what drew them in, and what continues to draw young women, some to the their deaths.
For people witnessing a loved one struggle with the disease, this book might make lucid some of the reasons why. For them it’s a good choice. And for professionals in the medical and psychological fields, it’d no doubt be illuminating and on point to have on a library or office shelf.
But as a reading suggestion or a gift for most young women?
Better to steer away from that. Anorexia casts a wide enough spell on its own; it doesn’t need help furthering its mystique.
Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-denial, and Overcoming Anorexia
Edited by Kate Taylor
Anchor Books 301 pages, $15
Charity Vogel is a News feature writer. cvogel@buffnews.com
