What One Man Said to Another: Talks with Richard Selzer

As Josyph says in his preface, "To walk with Richard Selzer is to walk with civilization, " and these conversations are full of the sparkling wit, the piercing insight, the poetic vision, and the knowledge of both medicine and literature that have made him the most eloquent voice in the medical humanities movement while ranking him with the finest living authors of short fiction and personal essays. Along with controversial views on AIDS, euthanasia, and recent trends in medical training, these probing talks depict, in language that is by turns elegant, bawdy, and reflective, his harrowing experience as a surgeon in an isolated village in postwar Korea; his childhood during the Depression in a small tubercular town that was famous for its whores; his unconventional residency that led to singing a song from The Mikado during Grand Rounds; the unforgettable evening in which he saved the life of author John Cheever; his courtroom agony during a malpractice suit; and his encounters with celebrities such as Orson Welles, John Houseman, Richard Ellmann, Josef Albers, and one of Charlie's Angels. Peter Josyph draws from his own multifaceted background to lead Selzer into a broad range of topics, proving, in every chapter, that the art of entertaining conversation is still very much alive.