The unintended preservation of the cultural divide

Abstract

This book is a complex work which makes considerable demands on its readers. As its title suggests, it deals with the nature of migraine and how the disorder and its sufferers are considered from the literary perspective. Haan explains he is ‘first exploring the relation between pain and language … [then] how people with pain may make their pain “readable” and how fictional texts about pain “perform” the pain instead of only describing it’ (p.vi). Aiming to ‘compare medical thoughts on pain and migraine with those provoked by literary works in their paradigms of expression, and [trying] to bring these together’ (p.vi), he anticipates the discussion he sets out on pages 102–103 concerning C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, a work which is considered further at the end of this review. The book’s author, Dr Joost Haan, who describes himself as ‘a migraine specialist and scholar of literary studies’ (p.vi), has singled out migraine as being a disorder which has not received adequate attention, and one which contrasts with disorders characterized by persistent pain: ‘As paroxysmal pain has additional aspects, it is … of importance to consider it as something special and analyze these aspects separately’ (p.37), although Haan does not consider other intermittent but chronic painful conditions such as trigeminal neuralgia and proctalgia fugax.