Echolocation’s main weakness is its short range: Some bats can detect small moths from about six to nine yards away. But they can do so in darkness so total that vision simply doesn’t work. Even in pitch-blackness, bats can skirt around branches and pluck minuscule insects from the sky. Of course, bats are not the only animals that hunt nocturnally. In the Tetons, as I watch Barber tagging bats, mosquitoes bite me through my shirt, attracted by the smell of the carbon dioxide on my breath. While I itch, an owl flies overhead, tracking its prey using a radar dish of stiff facial feathers that funnel sound toward its ears. These creatures have all evolved senses that allow them to thrive in the dark. But the dark is disappearing.
Cancer isn't one thing. It's over one hundred things, over one hundred variations on a theme of uncontrolled cell growth, all with their own particular expressions. There are four types of breast cancer, four types of melanoma. As Dr. Jonathan Chernoff, Chief Scientific Officer at Fox Chase Cancer Center, has explained, "It turns out cancer is a general term. There are lots of different kinds of cancer in different tissues that act in different ways. They're not all caused by the same mutations and they're not all going to respond to the same type of treatment."
Genetic variations in all of us make each cancer its own unique experience. Some treatments work well for some people, and other people not at all. I didn't have the right BRAF mutation for vemurafenib, a treatment that was approved by the FDA mere days before I was diagnosed at Stage 4. Is vemurafenib an effective treatment for a specific type of cancer? Yes. Would anybody call it "the cure" for cancer? Of course not.
Grief wracks us in many ways. Of course, much is made of the mental and emotional toll of grief, as well-wishers encourage those suffering to “take their time” and offer space and a sympathetic ear. But grief, and suffering at large, often manifests itself in physical means as well. Times like these can show that the heart and mind are also fleshy organs, not quite at the far remove we all too-often place them at. It’s this divide—or lack thereof—that Sally Oliver explores in her debut novel, Garden of Earthly Bodies. As Marianne struggles to come to terms with her younger sister’s death, small black hairs begin to appear along her spine. While the hairs seem benign enough, they unsettle Marianne, leading her on a journey of not only medical inquiry but self-inquiry as well, as she confronts the depths of her fears. Garden of Earthly Bodies ripples with visceral language that conceals an ominous underbelly, ever threatening to burst free, but the contrived plot and uneven pacing prevent it from truly reaching the primal core it yearns for.
“Here Lies” is a stunning and evocative work of speculative fiction by Mississippi author Olivia Clare Friedman about two young women brought together in the year 2042 by their mutual grief as they wade through the mire of climate-battered Louisiana. Exploring the potential physical ramifications of, and social reactions to, global warming, “Here Lies” is a tender examination of the enduring bonds of humanity amid a bleak and dystopian future.
Be it the humans who call Antarctica home in 2007’s “Encounters at the End of the World,” the morality of capital punishment in 2011’s “Into the Abyss,” or a sweet man with a dangerous affinity for bears in 2005’s “Grizzly Man,” the connective tissue of Herzog’s output reveals an enduring fascination with the nature of obsession, the people ensnared by it, and the strange places our infatuations can lead.
In his debut novel, “The Twilight World,” Herzog returns once more to this fertile well by immortalizing the surreal saga of real-life Imperial Army Lt. Hiroo Onoda.
Lange doesn’t have a false nostalgia for malls. “Meet Me by the Fountain” is frank about how they have usurped public space. But at a time when malls still serve the function of bringing us together, Lange’s book is a thoughtful guide to helping them do what the best of them already have — but better.
This is the world I’m tethered to:
clouds, lavender-tinged, and below them
russet-going-on-green hillsides.