The Whistlers' Room: Stories and Essays

Widely and justly celebrated, Richard Selzer is one of America’s most accomplished stylists, a physician turned writer in the grand tradition that stretches from Chekhov to William Carlos Williams to Oliver Sachs. 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 wisdom and imagination.