Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life
Buy on Amazon.com
Written in a wholly original voice, at once sensuous and intelligent, Called Back is a cancer memoir for the 21st century.
Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life Mary Cappello
In her intensely personal and insightful memoir, Mary Cappello wonders aloud for us what breast cancer awareness really makes us aware of, and responds as if for the first time to the deceivingly simple command: “tell me what you’re feeling.” Unable to eat on chemotherapy, Cappello feasts on the paintings of Marsden Hartley, yearns in the tradition of Dickinson and Stein, keeps company with Proust, and lets queer artists tease her back to life. Called Back looks through the lens of cancer to discover—often with humor—new truths about intimacy and essential solitude, eroticism, the fact of the body, and the impossibility of turning away.
Mary Cappello is the author of two previous books of literary nonfiction, Night Bloom, and Awkward: A Detour, a Los Angeles Times Bestseller. Her essays and experimental prose appear in such places as The Georgia Review, Salmagundi, Southwest Review, American Letters and Commentary, and have been awarded The Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination from Teachers and Writers Collaborative, the Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, and Notable Essay of the Year Citations in The Best American Essays. A former Fulbright Lecturer at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow, Russia, Cappello is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island.
October 12, Monday, New York: Barnes and Noble, 82nd and Broadway, 2289 Broadway, 7 pm.
"I began Mary Cappello's book with some fear. As a survivor of breast cancer I was not eager to relive the experiences. To my surprise, I was instantly captivated by Cappello's merciful honesty, her courageous and profound descriptions, and her humor - yes, passages so funny I had to put the book down to laugh at the absurdities enmeshed in some of the medical treatments and relationships, a laughter that might end in tears of remembered sorrow, both relieving and deeply healing, and then become laughter again.
As a writer, I was inspired and enthralled by the beauty of her language. I did not think anyone could turn the experience of breast cancer into poetry, being accustomed to banalities and outright lies, and here was proof that I was wrong. Mary Cappello does not shrink either from truth or from beauty, and in every way gives herself, and therefore gives to us, her readers, the uncompromising depth of her experience so that Called Back becomes a memoir about breast cancer in the particular, but, like any true poetry becomes more - a story about the experience of profound suffering, and how one brave, resilient and brilliant woman found her way through." - Jane Lazarre, author of Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery
"There is no scarier moment than when the doctor looks at his feet, clears his throat, and mutters that you have cancer. The earth opens under you. After a while, most patients summon a remarkable courage to confront the relentless disease and the rugged cures. But few have summoned the clear-eyed, large-hearted intelligence that Mary Cappello has to describe the experience in harrowing, redemptive detail. With precision, passion, wit, and a poet’s eye for the incongruous and devastating--that is to say, the human¬--she has written a book that will open your eyes and touch your heart. Called Back is an account of how a life can be broken and put back together again. It’s an astonishing literary achievement." - J. D. McClatchy, editor of The Yale Review, author of Mercury Dressing
"The warmth of Called Back comes from how much faith Mary Cappello puts in, and how much solace she derives from, literature and art. Appropriate, since the momentum of Called Back—and it possesses considerable momentum—derives from her extraordinarily capacious mind: her intelligence, wit, and emotional candor; the clarity and alertness of her train of thought; the restlessness of her style. The book has impressive energy: she’s always moving past herself, exploring larger issues. Cappello worries ideas relentlessly and makes stunning connections between literature, art, her life, medicine, cancer. A brilliant book." - David Shields, author of The Thing About Life is One Day You’ll Be Dead, and Reality Hunger
"Although I haven’t (yet) been there myself, the details of Mary Cappello’s sojourn in the underworld of breast cancer treatment felt familiar and true: her obsessive search for portents, the camaraderie she finds in the radiology dungeon, her sense of isolation as therapy proceeds, her anger at cancer kitsch. I loved being offered the companionship of Cappello’s feeling mind, full of sharp insights into coupledom, friendship, teaching. I loved her insistence on taking everything in, not rushing to be “healed” before experience registers. I loved the precision and passion with which this book about facing mortality attends to the particulars of being alive—both in the body and in language." - Jan Clausen author of If You Like Difficulty, and From a Glass House, and Apples and Oranges: My Journey through Sexual Identity
Written in a wholly original voice, at once sensuous and intelligent, Called Back is a cancer memoir for the 21st century.
Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life Mary Cappello
In her intensely personal and insightful memoir, Mary Cappello wonders aloud for us what breast cancer awareness really makes us aware of, and responds as if for the first time to the deceivingly simple command: “tell me what you’re feeling.” Unable to eat on chemotherapy, Cappello feasts on the paintings of Marsden Hartley, yearns in the tradition of Dickinson and Stein, keeps company with Proust, and lets queer artists tease her back to life. Called Back looks through the lens of cancer to discover—often with humor—new truths about intimacy and essential solitude, eroticism, the fact of the body, and the impossibility of turning away.
Mary Cappello is the author of two previous books of literary nonfiction, Night Bloom, and Awkward: A Detour, a Los Angeles Times Bestseller. Her essays and experimental prose appear in such places as The Georgia Review, Salmagundi, Southwest Review, American Letters and Commentary, and have been awarded The Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination from Teachers and Writers Collaborative, the Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, and Notable Essay of the Year Citations in The Best American Essays. A former Fulbright Lecturer at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow, Russia, Cappello is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island.
Tour Dates
October 7, Wednesday, New York: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, 208 W. 13th St, reception at 6:30 pm, program at 7 pm.October 12, Monday, New York: Barnes and Noble, 82nd and Broadway, 2289 Broadway, 7 pm.
Advance Praise
"Mary Cappello's Called Back shimmers on the page. Ezra Pound said a writer has to "make it new" and Cappello has done that rare feat. Cancer books have become a genre that nobody wants to read, except this book. Read this book. Called Back is exquisite." -Patty Dann author of Mermaids, and of The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth About It)"I began Mary Cappello's book with some fear. As a survivor of breast cancer I was not eager to relive the experiences. To my surprise, I was instantly captivated by Cappello's merciful honesty, her courageous and profound descriptions, and her humor - yes, passages so funny I had to put the book down to laugh at the absurdities enmeshed in some of the medical treatments and relationships, a laughter that might end in tears of remembered sorrow, both relieving and deeply healing, and then become laughter again.
As a writer, I was inspired and enthralled by the beauty of her language. I did not think anyone could turn the experience of breast cancer into poetry, being accustomed to banalities and outright lies, and here was proof that I was wrong. Mary Cappello does not shrink either from truth or from beauty, and in every way gives herself, and therefore gives to us, her readers, the uncompromising depth of her experience so that Called Back becomes a memoir about breast cancer in the particular, but, like any true poetry becomes more - a story about the experience of profound suffering, and how one brave, resilient and brilliant woman found her way through." - Jane Lazarre, author of Wet Earth and Dreams: A Narrative of Grief and Recovery
"There is no scarier moment than when the doctor looks at his feet, clears his throat, and mutters that you have cancer. The earth opens under you. After a while, most patients summon a remarkable courage to confront the relentless disease and the rugged cures. But few have summoned the clear-eyed, large-hearted intelligence that Mary Cappello has to describe the experience in harrowing, redemptive detail. With precision, passion, wit, and a poet’s eye for the incongruous and devastating--that is to say, the human¬--she has written a book that will open your eyes and touch your heart. Called Back is an account of how a life can be broken and put back together again. It’s an astonishing literary achievement." - J. D. McClatchy, editor of The Yale Review, author of Mercury Dressing
"The warmth of Called Back comes from how much faith Mary Cappello puts in, and how much solace she derives from, literature and art. Appropriate, since the momentum of Called Back—and it possesses considerable momentum—derives from her extraordinarily capacious mind: her intelligence, wit, and emotional candor; the clarity and alertness of her train of thought; the restlessness of her style. The book has impressive energy: she’s always moving past herself, exploring larger issues. Cappello worries ideas relentlessly and makes stunning connections between literature, art, her life, medicine, cancer. A brilliant book." - David Shields, author of The Thing About Life is One Day You’ll Be Dead, and Reality Hunger
"Although I haven’t (yet) been there myself, the details of Mary Cappello’s sojourn in the underworld of breast cancer treatment felt familiar and true: her obsessive search for portents, the camaraderie she finds in the radiology dungeon, her sense of isolation as therapy proceeds, her anger at cancer kitsch. I loved being offered the companionship of Cappello’s feeling mind, full of sharp insights into coupledom, friendship, teaching. I loved her insistence on taking everything in, not rushing to be “healed” before experience registers. I loved the precision and passion with which this book about facing mortality attends to the particulars of being alive—both in the body and in language." - Jan Clausen author of If You Like Difficulty, and From a Glass House, and Apples and Oranges: My Journey through Sexual Identity
