Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

            Almost everyone nowadays knows or has known someone who went through a battle with cancer. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett is the story of Ann’s friendship with Lucy Grealy, a fellow author and poet who struggled with cancer for almost all of her life, and how Lucy impacted her forever.

Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma when she was under 10 years old and struggled with its impacts throughout the remainder of her life. Her jawbone was removed, and she struggled with the negative body image that it gave her forever. She also had difficulty speaking and swallowing because her remaining facial bone was too fragile to hold more than the six teeth that cancer left her with. This led to her going through many more surgeries on her body so that she could look and hopefully feel “beautiful.” Lucy wrote her own book, Autobiography of a Face, that told this story of her cancer. On the other hand, Ann Patchett wrote Truth & Beauty about the parts of their lives that they shared and their relationship behind Lucy’s cancer treatments.

Both Ann and Lucy attended the same college, Sarah Lawrence, at the same time, but they never became close. After they were both accepted into the esteemed Iowa Writers Workshop, they became roommates and their friendship began to blossom.

This memoir follows the lives of Lucy and Ann through the life they went through together. In addition, Ann also included the letters that they sent each other when they were separated. The theme of this book appeared to me about, as the title suggests, real beauty and what it entails. Lucy Grealy struggled throughout her life with people judging her solely on her looks. From getting plastic surgery to trying any means of getting more than six teeth, Lucy was always one step behind her disease. This part of the book was so powerful that I had to pause a few times because the emotion was so strong. Is there a point where you can’t win? Should Lucy just give up on beating her disease because of all the pain the surgeries are causing her as well as her family and friends?

Lucy was constantly looking for Ann’s reassurance on these matters of love and beauty, relentlessly asking Ann questions to boost her confidence. ‘Do you love me, Ann? Do you love me the most? Do you think I’m pretty? Do you think I’m talented?’ Ann was always there for her, keeping her sane and helping her mentally, physically, and financially.

During her life, Lucy keeps stacking up her medical and school bills, constantly going more and more in debt but never paying any of it back.  This leads Ann to describe their relationship using an ant and a grasshopper metaphor where Lucy was the carefree grasshopper, always having fun and doing things last minute, while Ann was the ant who kept moving forward at the same steady pace, always following the beaten path to ensure security. The two struggle to become commended authors throughout the book until Lucy publishes her novel, Autobiography of a Face and Ann eventually publishes The Patron Saint of Liars. From that point, Lucy seems to become more independent and Ann is in less of her life.

Ultimately, fame is not enough for Lucy, and she becomes dependent on OxyContin, which was prescribed to her after her final reconstructive surgery, just like she had earlier in the story with codeine. She also resorts to cutting herself with razor blades, drinking, and taking any pills she could find to cope with the pain she felt inside. Lucy felt that fame because of her face was worth nothing; what she really needed was someone who truly loved her. She found this in Ann who was consistently at her bedside and trying to convince her to give up her drug and alcohol habits. This part was also extremely full of feeling. It was hard for me to understand at first what Ann was getting out of the relationship where she was basically the parent to Lucy’s antics. Conversely, by this point, Ann has painted this picture of Lucy as a lovable, vibrant woman with so much talent to offer the world. I felt that I was right alongside Ann next to the hospital bed, telling Lucy to never give up and to keep on fighting.

By the end of the book, Ann starts hearing from Lucy less and less. Ann tries to convince Lucy to go into a drug rehabilitation program, but Lucy’s health gradually diminishes further and she becomes even more addicted to heroin.

On December 18, 2002, Ann gets a call telling her that Lucy had died of a heroin overdose at the age of 39. The last few pages convey to us that Ann still has Lucy in her dreams and heart, and that she still cannot believe that Lucy is really gone. Ann closes the book with two exceptionally powerful lines: “The sheer force of Lucy’s life convinced me that she would live no matter what. That was my mistake.”

This book really spoke to me because I have known multiple people who have struggled with cancer for years and in the end lost the fight. I felt that it was amazing that even with all the stress and problems that Lucy brought her, Ann was always there, the one unwavering supporter in Lucy’s life. This memoir truly demonstrates the power of friendship and how one person can impact your life forever.

Mary Wollstonecraft on the Rights of Women

            Throughout this article’s entirety, Mary Wollstonecraft is challenging the stereotypical place in society that women held in her era (the mid to late 1700s). She starts off by speaking of how a woman’s only role is to be beautiful and that their character “governs by obeying”. Much later in the article, Wollstonecraft comes back to that point by stating that “women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex”. I feel that she makes a fair point on this aspect---many of the most notable women do not follow the stereotypes of females; they take a different view that some would consider to be like a man.

            On that note, Wollstonecraft combats any rebuttal by saying that women “have been drawn out of their sphere by false refinement, and not by an endeavour to acquire masculine qualities.” I believe that this was one of her best points. Those skeptical of these thoughts may say that women are trying to be like men, which makes men the ideal. False. Women are pushing their society’s boundaries because of the role thrust upon them, not because they are trying to be like men.

            Another matter that Wollstonecraft discusses is the role that education plays on the lives of women. She claims that women receive “only a disorderly kind of education” and that “learning is with them, in general, only a secondary thing” because women are taught that their goal is to serve a husband. Perhaps the reason for a woman’s gentleness is because “they dwell on effects”, Wollstonecraft ponders.

            The biggest “issue” that Wollstonecraft claims threatens a woman from changing her place in society is love. The love that she speaks of is passion, not the friendship that blossoms into a romantic interest, the passion that is said to be able to distract a woman from any other goal.

At one point, Wollstonecraft references Rousseau who states that “a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise her natural cunning.” This notion seems completely absurd to me. Why should a woman not be allowed to assert her independence in the world? Later, this point is brought back. Why should a woman only seek to please? “Whether she be loved or neglected, her first wish should be to make herself respectable,” Wollstonecraft states. I agree with her that this is how happiness should be attained. Without being happy with herself, a man’s love will never last, Wollstonecraft pronounces.

This article brings to attention all the strides that women have made since Mary Wollstonecraft was alive. Women can now vote, hold political offices, and we even had a woman make it further than ever before in the United States presidential race. Even though women have many more opportunities, there is still a large portion of people that still hold opinions of women that are far inferior to the thoughts of men. However subtle these opinions are, I’m sure that just about everyone would agree that this is the truth.

I personally believe that women will always, or at least for a very long time, be considered by some to be inferior to men. The history is too deeply rooted to be completely swayed in a short segment of time from one pole to another. Though I feel that this will not be a painless journey, I’m sure that if men and women work together and treat each other as equals, the trip will not be fruitless.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

            When I first began to read this article, all my thoughts were skeptical. Just like most of today’s teenagers, I use Google and the internet often. But how can simply looking up a fact here and there and searching for a little extra information impact my entire thinking process? After reading the article, I feel that Nicholas Carr’s thoughts about this, backed up by many sources, are sadly very true.

            The part that really made me feel like he was right was when he spoke of how “…[his] concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages…. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text.” In today’s fast-paced world, we all want to just do whatever we need to do so that we are done.  Before the internet became commonplace, people would be able to sit down and read a large novel because they enjoyed it. Now, people just skim and hope for a decent summary because they can’t concentrate long enough.

            In this day and age, many aspects of everyday life are run by some form of the internet. No longer are we basing our internet use on things that are already here, we are basing new things on the internet and its capabilities. The internet is changing the natural process of human thought into an automated, almost machine-like algorithm, intent on multi-tasking if necessary to get the job done. Ironically enough, I had just put a fresh CD in my computer to give myself a little bit of white noise before embarking on this article. Halfway through, I turned the music off after realizing that I was just like another statistic in this story.

            Later in the article, Carr discusses how the Google founders feel about what it is becoming. Larry Page, one of the founders, stated that they are trying to make Google into something smarter and more powerful than people, which seems like a frightening concept to me.

            This article really opened my eyes to how much of an impact the internet is having, not only on how we find information, but how we process and utilize that information. The next time I head to the search box for some quick info, I’m really going to be thinking a lot harder than normal!