CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 415
cannot always be credibly maintained by the text. In an interview
attached to the 2011 Scribner paperback edition, Mukherjee's tone is a
bit more muted. There is no more talk about getting into the "mind" of
cancer; retaining the term "biography," he now defines his story more
tentatively as "a portrait of an illness over time" (573). The literary
critical term "protagonist" would probably best characterize the
organizationofnarrativeandsubjectpositionsinEmperor.^110
Whatmakesthisbookinterestingforthepurposesofculturalcritique
is thefactthatEmperorofAllMaladiesis thoroughlycultural.Notonly
does the author speak of "understanding culturally" (574) the cancer
experience from inside and outside, the story he weaves is cultural
through and through. Cancer, Mukherjee states, is, as was mentioned
above, "a disease of symbols" (439), symbols which affect sufferers as
muchasthemedicalresearcherswhoareconstantlyseekingtodecipher
them,astheyalsotrytolearnthelanguageofthedisease:"Thelanguage
of cancer is grammatical, methodical, and even—I hesitate to write—
quitebeautiful.Genestalktogenesandpathwaystopathwaysinperfect
pitch, producing a familiar yet foreign music that rolls faster and faster
intolethalrhythm"(454).Onceagain,therelationshipbetweensomatics
and semantics seems to organize his reflections. Still, in reading these
words,itseemsasifMukherjeegetscarriedawaybyhisownanalogies,
whichare,strictlyspeaking,conventional,ashemovesfromlanguageto
music.
The attempt made by this book to represent the multitudinous
realitiesinadequatelysummarizedbytheterm "cancer"isanchoredin a
cluster of what in the media is widely called "biopics," brief narratives
about actors in the story of cancer, patients, doctors, researchers, and a
variety of public figures. Their stories are multiply interwoven, in this
way forming a multigenerational, multi-agent narrative, a medical
"saga"ofsortsaboutthe"empireofcancer"(401).Itallbeginslikethis:
On the morning of May 19, 2004, Carla Reed, a thirty-year-old
kindergarten teacher from Ipswich, Massachusetts, a mother of three(^110) As a readerly aside, one might ponder here the tendency, even among
researchersandmedicalexperts,toculturalizetheobjectoftheirinquiry,turning
itintoanagentwithalmostnovelistictraits.