THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406080493
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY IRENE NOLAN
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Medium
{REST} REYNOLDS PRICE, born and raised in North Carolina, is one of the South's foremost authors. He has published more than two dozen books, including Kate Vaiden, winner of the 1986 National Book Critics Circle Award, and his fine 1989 memoir, Clear Pictures.
His most recent novel, Blue Calhoun, appeared in 1992; Collected Stories followed the next year. The prolific Duke University English professor has also published collections of poetry and essays, plays, and Biblical translations, and has written for film and television. He has even given native North Carolinian James Taylor the words for some of his songs.
Price's A Whole New Life begins the spring of 1984, a year that the author describes as the best of his life. He is 51 years old and walking across the Duke campus with a colleague, who remarks that Price's left foot is slapping on the ground.
Price dismisses his stiffly slapping foot but is quickly faced with enough other puzzling physical symptoms to seek medical advice. In two days, he is in Duke Hospital scheduled for surgery. The surgery reveals a large, cancerous tumor in his spinal cord, so entwined that the surgeon can remove only a small part of it.
``The tumor was pencil-thick and gray colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward,'' Price writes. He calls the insidious cancer ``the eel'' and titles one of his ``relevant poems'' in the back of the book with the same striking image.
Price then proceeds to tell the engrossing story of his recovery from this catastrophic illness: the radiation, with its horrifying side effects, that temporarily arrests the tumor; his quickly continuing loss of control of his lower body; the severe and constant pain; and his poignant and often comical time spent in rehabilitation, as he learns to deal with his ``gimphood.''
Eventually, two more operations to remove the progressive cancer occur, with more horrific pain, and Price discovers that hypnosis and biofeedback can control his disease more effectively than large doses of drugs. Early on he experiences a religious vision that sustains him through much of his ordeal and opens him up to the ``now appalling, now astonishing grace of God.''
Price deals extensively in A Whole New Life with the human interactions that are very much a part of his recovery, with his relatives and friends and the roles they played. He evaluates, sometimes ruthlessly but always seemingly fairly, the physicians and other medical professionals who were a part of his treatment. And he describes his return to work: He has been much more productive in the years since the discovery of the cancer than he was in the previous two decades.
Price, who is paraplegic, recounts his struggle honestly and forthrightly, without indulging in self-pity. At times, he is painfully intimate. He lays down his fears, his desperation and his suffering for all to read. And, in the end, he lays out all the reasons why the years since his catastrophe have been better and fuller than the ones before.
He comes to a conclusion that is so obvious it is startling. The struggle to return to the person he used to be was a useless one. That person is dead, he writes. The real struggle was to find out who he would be ``from here to the grave, which may be hours or decades down the road.''
Price's customary graceful use of language makes A Whole New Life a joy to read, despite the suffering. He is both inspiring and insightful, a survivor who, having lived and learned the struggle, now shares it.
by CNB