{"id":100033,"date":"2017-03-02T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T17:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=100033"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:26:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:26:02","slug":"never-let-the-reader-forget-whats-at-stake","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2017\/never-let-the-reader-forget-whats-at-stake\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Never Let the Reader Forget What\u2019s at Stake’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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March 2, 2017<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\tTwitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\tFacebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Michael Stein Author; Chair and Professor of Health Law, Policy & Management<\/span><\/h2><\/p>\n

Hometown: New York City, New York<\/p>\n

Breakfast: Labne with honey and walnuts<\/p>\n

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What led to your becoming a writer and novelist?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I\u2019ve always liked playing with words and watching how others play. Is there anything better than opening a book to a random page and seeing how another person arranges language? Is it clumsy? Is it intelligent? You know the answer in two sentences. I love verbal texture, and sounds. To become a novelist, you have to find subjects that interest you enough to explore and test them. And then you have to find characters whom you want to put under moral and formal pressure. And then you stick with this mule work for about three years until these characters become unmistakably yours and you have a book.\"SPH<\/p>\n

How does your writing relate to your work as a physician and public health researcher?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I\u2019ve found that I like to stare at things. Writers and doctors should never be ashamed of staring; it\u2019s part of the job. Still, writers and researchers like to find remarkable things\u2014doctors are less amused by the remarkable–and staring is the first canon of science and art as far as I\u2019m concerned. Doctors and writers perceive the world through dual channels\u2014through the senses and through the mind\u2014and each is constantly seeping into the other. Staring allows time for that bidirectional flow to happen.<\/p>\n

What is the importance of storytelling in public health? In your work on addiction in particular?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Stories, at least the ones we remember, are always about trouble. A person is in trouble, maybe in pain. She has a conflict\u2014maybe with herself, maybe with her neighbor or parent, maybe with the plumber or the mayor. She has no easy answers. Or what she believes is the easy answer changes. There must be inconsistency or the story becomes predictable. To tell gripping public health stories we must take up people, living in communities, who are in trouble, people who are looking for an answer and get to one that wasn\u2019t obvious in the beginning. But not too many people are on the search\u2014maybe it\u2019s just one parent living in Flint and one public health officer. Each is looking for an answer about the water, but each finds the problem is more than about lead.<\/p>\n

The job, then, of storytellers, when writing about public health, when writing non-fiction, is that they must never let the reader forget what\u2019s at stake. The importance of the science or public health writer\u2019s tale is to make sure everyone knows what the overriding purpose of their writing is. On the other hand, for the fiction writer, too much information is the enemy.<\/p>\n

Do you have any literary recommendations for folks working in public health?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There are so many great writers out there. I usually read books that are short; I don\u2019t have much time. I alternate between utilitarian and arty\/wordy. If you\u2019re a faculty member in any academic setting and you like funny, try Julie Schumacher\u2019s Dear Committee Members<\/em>. I thought Errol Morris\u2019 Believing Is Seeing<\/em> was really interesting about what we trust to be fact, a newly serious concern in our world these days. Finally, I thought Learning to Die in the Anthropocene\u00a0<\/em>was a great polemic on the great public health concern of our time, climate change.<\/p>\n

\u2014Michelle Samuels<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Michael Stein on telling public health stories, writing novels, and the importance of staring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10989,"featured_media":100233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[2222,2302],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3531,3535,3536,3541],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[2135],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/100033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100033"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/100033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173939,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/100033\/revisions\/173939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100033"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=100033"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=100033"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=100033"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=100033"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=100033"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=100033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}