Personal Canons

Dean Crawford

The Personal Canon of
Dean Crawford, Ph.D.
Adjunct Associate Professor of English
Vassar College
Williamstown, Massachusetts

1:   Herzog by Saul Bellow
2.   The Book of Laughter & Forgetting by Milan Kundera 
3.   Emma by Jane Austen
4.   To the Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf
5.   Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6.   "The Mending Wall" by Robert Frost
7.   “Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats
8.   As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
9.   Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
10. Good Behaviour by Molly Keane       

Nicholas Davies: Reading Binges

Posthumous Selections of
Nicholas E. Davies, M.D.
Professor of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia

1.   War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
2.   The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
3.   The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade
4.   A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
5.   Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Payton
6.   The Mapmapers, by  John Noble Wilford
7.   The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins
8.   Complete Essays by Michel Montaigne
9.   Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
10. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia     

Nicholas Davies was an internist and a great reader.  This list was culled from an essay that he wrote that was published in the British Medical Jounnal in 1989:  Download reading_binges_1.pdf

David Biro Canon

Selections of
David Biro, M.D., Ph.D.
Dermatologist, Writer
Brooklyn, New York

1.     Cider House Rules by John Irving
2.     My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
3.     The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat:
        and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
4.     W;t by Margaret Edelson (can rent on DVD)
5.    “People Like Me Are the Only People Here”
        in Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
6.     A Small Good Thing by Raymond Carver
7.     Of Human Bondage by A.J. Cronin
8.     David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
9.     Love in the Time of Cholera by
10.   Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier     

Comment:

     I thought a lot your request for a Canon, to put together a list of books that I would want my [dermatologist] to have read. Here's what I selected, after lots of thinking and indecision,  However, I want you to know that I'm not satisfied. I can't stand the idea of lists, of must-reads, of limiting the selections. The truth is I'd like my physician -- and my wife, my children, and friends for that matter -- to read everything. Beyond books dealing with doctors and patients, illness and death.    

I'd like my physician to have read all the great works of literature that have moved me in the past.  And I say this not because I necessarily believe that reading will make a physician more caring and sympathetic but because it can't help but enlarge him or her, broaden his perspectives -- so that his only focus is not just the disease and its treatment and that perhaps he may come to possess an inkling, maybe even an understanding of, the bigger picture. Probably, I'm being unrealistic.

Note: David Biro’s book “One Hundred Days” is a must read for all medical students and physicians, in my opinion.  You can purchase a copy here:  100 Days  (DJ Epern)

Sandra Bertman: Canon

Personal Canon of
Sandra Bertman, Ph.D.
Professor, Palliative Care and Medical Humanities
Boston College Graduate School of Social Work

1.     Learning to Fall: Blessings of an Imperfect Life
        by Richard Simmons
2.     The Call of  Stories by Robert Coles
3.     Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen 
4.     Intoxicated by My Illness by Anatole Broyard
5      A Troubled Guest: Life & Death Stories by Nancy Mairs
6.     New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver
7.     Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge
        by Mem Fox and Merrion Frances
8.     Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson by Emily Dickenson
9.     Ikiru by Akira. Kurosawa (film) 
10.   A Grief Observed by CS Lewis     

Osler Canon

The idea for a "medical canon" began with Sir William Osler's bedside library. Early in his life,  "he began his life-long habit of a half-hour's reading in bed before putting out the light.  Most medical students, alas, are too engrossed with their work for such literary pursuits, desirable though they may be."  Osler also wrote:  "It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it."  He looked at "reading as an avocation" and a "quinquennial brain dusting"

While few of us will read all of Osler's recommended books, his suggestion of a Bedside Library is inspired.

BED-SIDE LIBRARY FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS

Selections of
William Osler, M.D.
Regius Professor of Medicine
Oxford, England

I.       Old and New Testaments
II.       Shakespeare
III.     Montaigne
IV.     Plutarch’s Lives
V.      Marcus Aurelius
VI.     Religio Medici
VII.    Epictetus   
VIII.   Don Quixote
IX.     Emerson
X.      Oliver Wendell Holmes - Breakfast-Table Series  

Canon Guidelines

Canon Philosophy and Submission Guidelines

In this blog we will publish a series of Personal Canons. You are invited to submit a selection of ten books, poems, essays or articles that quickly come to mind — those which have greatly influenced you; or perhaps those you would want your students, trainees or colleagues to read. Classics are not required; submitted lists contain contemporary books and inspirational essays, as well as works that have been in existence for hundreds or thousands of years. Some respondents have listed individual poems; others have included film favorites from the celluloid literature. Both are equally acceptable.

In the Canon project, we seek to get at the distinction that Horace makes in his treatise, Ars Poetica. He separates authors into two categories: the good, who simply delight, and the great, who mix the useful with the sweet ("qui miscuit utile et dulci"). This latter category is where we envision the Canon Project moving. We envision the canons as forming a core humanities library of sorts for health professionals and students who wish to look beyond mere science and technology.  These Canons address the contributors' ideas of what constitutes "creative reading" for the physician, nurse, future caregiver or other health care professional.

If you wish to submit a personal canon, please follow the format found in those published here  list your ten works, followed by a brief explanation of why each one resonates with you. See example here: Download elpern_canon.pdf

Alternatively,  you can access a Canon Template on Google Docs.  Then copy it and paste it into a Word file.  You may have to reformat a bit, but it should work.  You can then fill it in and email the document to me at DJE and I'll upload it to this web site.

Thank you,

DJE

For more specific background go to the Category "About" or: Download GuidelinesBlog

Send submissions, questions and comments to DJ Elpern.

About Canons

In 2006, the editors of Cell 2 Soul and Dermanities launched a new section called “Why Read? — Personal Canons,” conceived as a forum to share those works which resonate with us. We invited some friends, colleagues and teachers to share works which for them are canonical: i.e. those books, poems, perhaps movies which they keep returning to.  In the literary economy of the Latin poet, Horace, these are works which mix the useful and sweet (qui misquit utile et dulci).

The Canons we collected will be housed in this new blog.  To date we have gathered over 50 personal lists.  This is very much a "collection in progress." We encourage our readers to submit their own canons.  Don’t be shy!  Please follow the format of the canon which is attached here: Download GuidelinesBlog

You can read more about the Canon Philosophy at: Canon Philosophy.  

This New Yorker cover from October 2009 is called "In the World of Books" and addresses the philosophy behind this project.