Novel healing: is literature a medicine?

Hospital in-patients suffer not only from their illness but also from loneliness, isolation and, the fears and worries that are usual in hospital stays, far from social, work and family environment. These aspects are added to the excessive number of empty hours. All of these factors are bad for the mood and the soul, and could have serious effects, triggering depression and even worse, they could make more difficult or block recovery.


Since the end of the 18th century, the therapeutical benefits of free-time hobbies for in-patients have been accepted. But it was during World War I when regular libraries were set up in hospitals to help the treatment of the wounded soldiers. The idea spread to hundreds of military hospitals in Europe and the USA.

 In relation to this, UNESCO's (1972) Manifesto proclaims: “The services of the public library are provided on the basis of equality of access for all, regardless of age, race, sex, religion, nationality, language or social status. Specific services and materials must be provided for those who cannot, for whatever reason, use the regular services and materials, for example linguistic minorities, people with disabilities or people in hospital or prison…”.  http://www.unesco.org/webworld/libraries/manifiestos/libraman.html

In 1999, during the inaugural ceremony of Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid , the professor Rafael Quijano said: “Bibliotherapy is an important complementary technique in daily clinical, psychological and psychiatric practice. It aims to help the patients to develop their aptitudes, skills and self-esteem. In postoperative processes (usually accompanied by depression) and in psychologically-oriented symptomatology treatment, literature has a valuable influence in the patient. (…). In-patients need a leisure activity that makes their stayis in the hospital more pleasant and that lets them be connected with more familiar settings.This kind of reading has an entertaining goal and also reduces the patient concern and anxiety, acting as a therapeutic tool that will make rehabilitation easier”.

 On the other hand, scientific and technological improvements have resulted in man being able to solve problems and cure diseases by taking pills, by an injection or, pushing a button or a key to avoid pain, growing older or to keep anxiety away. Furthermore, psychiatry and psychology have developed tablets and therapies to help us be happier. But maybe the most effective prescription is as old as history itself and as simple as paper.

 This is the way of thinking of E. Berthoud and S. Elderkin, colleagues at the School of Life in Bloomsbury. They believe in the curative powers of the novel, and it has led them to set up a formal bibliotherapy service "for life's ailments". They prescribe only fiction ("the purest and best form of bibliotherapy") and concentrate on books written within the last couple of centuries.

  The Novel Cure is the result of these recommendations. "Our apothecary contains Balzacian balms, Tolstoyan tourniquets, salves of Saramago and the purges of Proust".
For example, under "L", you can find: "left out, feeling" (Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding), "libido, loss of" (Mario Vargas Llosa's In Praise of the Stepmother), "long-winded, being" (Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and "love, unrequited" (four novels: Turgenev's First Love, Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Ann Patchett's Bel Canto). Berthoud and Elderkin make it clear that they are not going to make any distinction between emotional and physical pain; they are as interested in literature that will help you heal a broken leg (Cleave by Nikki Gemmell) as much as a broken heart (Jane Eyre). But who knows? You might find yourself satisfied to know that one of your favourite books has been selected for its healing properties.

 Changing the subject, but not the issue: On a dark evening in Echo Park (California) in October 2012, Punk Hostage Press began its launch readings at Stories Books & Café on Sunset Boulevard.

At the time, the press had already put out a handful of books, mostly poetry and stories by the founders A. Razor and Iris Berry. As Berry and Razor had worked in shelters for homeless men and battered women, they started to think about bringing literature into the situation as a complement to established recovery programs. At the beginning of 2013, they decided to launch of a non-profit organization, Words As Works, dedicated to bringing books and creative writing to institutionalized people in prisons, shelters and recovery programs. Words As Works emerged from their own use of literature to remove themselves from traumatic situations. 

They had spent many years fighting drug addictions and had accumulated a past full of scenes of violence and misfortune. In other words, they are survivors and they realized that they had something to offer. Since then, both have developed pretty good lives. Berry works at a women’s shelter and as a fund-raiser for orphanages, the Red Cross, a prostitution rescue group, different rehab facilities and battered women’s shelters. Razor works at a homeless shelter, helping to treat men whose situations include repeated hospitalizations and arrests. “This kind of program has the potential to develop new ways to help people on a long-term basis”. “If it can work for us then it can work for others. We’re not reinventing the wheel—we’re just trying to keep it spinning.” —A. Razor.

San Francisco County Jail in San Bruno is a very progressive jail. It offers Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings in certain pods. Razor was invited to visit the jail for a reading during National Poetry Month.

At the end of the reading, some of the men told him: “ I write to understand myself".

                                                                                                                             Scissor Sister