By: Margaret Edson Publisher: Faber & Faber Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Faber & Faber Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 96 Publication Date: March 29, 1999
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer AwardMargaret Edson’s powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence’s unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships. What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.” In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end?The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson’swriting, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost anyinterested reader. As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who hasspent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of theseventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatinglypainful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-mindedvalues and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
Amazon.com Review: Wit is that rare beast: art that engages both the heart and the mind. "It is not my intention to give away the plot," Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., announces near the beginning of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "but I think I die at the end. They've given me less than two hours." For two hours, this famed Donne scholar takes center stage, interrupting her doctors, nurses, and students to explicate her own story, its metaphors and conceits. Recently diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer, she is being treated with an experimental drug cocktail administered in "eight cycles. Eight neat little strophes." The chemo makes her feel worse than she ever thought possible; in fact, the treatment is making her sick, not the disease--an irony she says she'd appreciate in a Donne sonnet, if not so much in life.
Throughout, Vivian finds, the doctors study and discuss her body like a text: "Once I did the teaching, now I am taught. This is much easier. I just hold still and look cancerous. It requires less acting every time." As her time draws to a close, a sea change begins to work in the way Vivian thinks about life, death, and indeed, Donne. His complex, tightly knotted poems have always been a puzzle for her formidable intellect, a chance to display "verbal swordplay" and wit. Her sickness presents an entirely different challenge. A powerful, prickly personality, capable of dry asides even during a bout of gut-wrenching nausea ("You may remark that my vocabulary has taken a turn for the Anglo-Saxon"), Vivian develops a new appreciation for the simple, the maudlin, the kind. Not to give away the plot, but the final moments in Margaret Edson's debut are as wrenching--as human--as anything in recent drama. --Mary Park
No wonder it won a Pulitzer Wit was recommended as a staff pick at my local library. Thank goodness! I doubt I would have found it otherwise, since I don't generally read play scripts.
Even though I'm an old English major from way back, I never studied John Donne's poetry in depth. The way Edson weaves the poetry with Vivian Bearing's growing realization that Donne spoke to her on an intimate level - what after all could be more intimate than the process of dying? - led me to examine some of my own preconceived notions of mortality and its relationship to the immortal.
That last paragraph of mine makes it sound as if this is heavy reading. Not at all! It is a multi-layered work, both grim and light, both stark and richly peopled. I loved the humor, the most notable of which is the line near the end, when Vivian is receiving a dose of morphine for her excruciating pain. She says that she wonders if the morphine will have a soporific effect. "I don't know about that," says her nurse, "but it sure does make you sleepy."
I took a chance and rented the Emma Thompson DVD. I don't trust movies ever to live up to the books they're based on - but I truly wondered how they'd handle a film version. I recommend the movie thoroughly, for it remains true to Edson's quirky way of blending past and present, ignoring the stuffy fourth wall that so many playwrights insist on.
WIT is witty. WIT is sad. WIT is a must-read.
And just wait till you find out why the I in WIT is (on the cover of the book) a semi-colon.
Great read for anyone going into the medical profession This book is an extremely quick read, but worthwhile. Margaret Edson does an excellent job of illustrating what it's like to experience cancer from the patient's perspective, diagnosis to death, and how patients can sometimes get lost in our focused agenda of tests, treatments, and paperwork.
undoubtedly compelling Simple, poignant and funny. I saw the movie starring Emma Thompson and was moved to read the original play. Highly recommended!
Wit analysis I read this book for a nursing class I am taking. It's a wonderful depiction of hospitalization, giving accurate portrayals of doctors, nurses and patients, which is surprising being written by a lay person. It was an easy read, about 45 minutes. I would recommend this book.
Phenomenal play, with great insight into the sociology of medicine This play is still appropriate, years after being written, as a keen insight into several challenging facets of the medical world, suffering, and difficult and long illnesses. It asks questions about how science and medicine interact, about how people and the science of medicine interact, and how that is portrayed and presented to the patient.
It's not just a controversial play on the philosophy of science and medicine, but it is also an examination of the relational and social aspects of one very successful academic's life and struggle with her cancer. It attempts to make very poignant remarks on who is important, why, and how, and generally succeeds in making the reader think deeply about how the end might look with friend, family, and others.
The HBO movie is a great visual representation of this play. Read the play first, then watch the movie.
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