A review of Pain Studies<\/em>, narrative nonfiction from Austin’s Lisa Olstein<\/p>\n

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Floating limbless on this buoyant, lyrical, ephemeral, beautiful sea of words, I wondered, where am I and, moreover, where is Olstein, the poet who created the tide? This work ebbs and flows like a reedy back bay, often calm and gentle, sometimes flooding, crashing and rough. The feel reminds me of Woolf, who is channeled here, with even greater dimensions of interiority, and a visceral texture of a Saul Bellow descriptive narrative. In a word or two, this work is deft, ingenious, almost overwhelmingly so. Let me explain.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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There\u2019s no describing the journey in other than comparatives: this is poetry, this is prose; this is raw physicality in words, this is contemplative. My first overarching feel was allegory, centered on pain. I wanted to see this as pain anchoring the imperfection, the spoiling of life that is human existence and the downward spiral of years. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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But it\u2019s more than that. Olstein uses pain\u2014migraines\u2014centrally, as Alice\u2019s looking glass sequel: what felt initially like a random series of plangent observations eventually yields an ordered arrangement from general to specific conceptualization, a parade of concession to pain. I can\u2019t help but see pain as a continuity of human struggle in life, and Olstein \u201cfights one fire with another,\u201d her words against pain\u2019s voiceless edicts. I can see the intransigent migraine pain as Joan of Arc, unrelenting, unrepentant, just as I can equally see Olstein as the remorseless heretic against pain\u2019s unavoidable sanctity: life isn\u2019t the absence of pain but rather, pain itself.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Olstein\u2019s trial is much like Joan of Arc\u2019s, her heresy examined from a kaleidoscope of perspectives: the Oxford English Dictionary, colors, math, tapestry, pain indices, and ultimately, sufferer as defendant. Olstein is on trial, but as sufferers condemned to mortality, so are we all. Like Joan of Arc, we all leave a painstaking trail of testimony, denial, refusal to accept or recant, \u201cepiphanic,\u201d she testifies, \u201cfull of lyric logic and lyric leaps,\u201d but in the end, to no avail. She is\u2014we are\u2014consumed by the fire, unrepentant.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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There is momentary d\u00e9tente in the standoff with pain, a pulled-back perspective at migraine\u2019s low tide:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201c. . . denial may be how I\u2019ve managed migraine, but migraine is what undoes my denial <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

. . . I learned there\u2019s no good time to be stricken and no preparation for being struck.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Much like life but more like death, there\u2019s no predicting, explaining, pinpointing causality, nor avoiding the pain of life. Olstein configures that darkness beautifully, coldly, lyrically, frighteningly, inexorably: \u201cThe irony is,\u201d Olstein quotes Maggie Nelson, \u201cMy catharsis was writing down there is no catharsis.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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This book defies definition and resists description, much less review. My final thought is this: take the journey, read it. It\u2019s brain, blood, pain, life, and death; poetry in prose, a book that must be read and lived to be owned. You\u2019ll neither regret nor forget the journey.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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