The Revelations of Beauty and Suffering in Crafting Evocative Prose: Contemplations of Broyard’s “Intoxicated by my Illness”

Abstract

This article presents an autoethnography on crafting beautiful prose. It explores the creative process of writing through an embodied account of learning art, succumbing to injury and reading aesthetic accounts of illness. Drawing parallels between the power of suffering and beauty, it highlights the tension between the technical and the poetic in art-making and aesthetic forms of academic writing. It reflects on Anatole Broyard’s “Intoxicated by my Illness,” to consider how a sense of “style” conveys a vitality of meaning that enables academic writers to move beyond representation towards resonance, revelation and human flourishing.

First Class

Never having formally studied art outside of high school, I felt a great deal of anticipation around my first drawing class. Yearning to write evocatively, I gravitated towards my childhood passion for art-making, thinking that this embodied activity could unlock a tacit and creative flow (Freeman, 2019; Lloyd & Smith, 2024). The visceral movements of sliding a pencil along a piece of paper rooted me in time and space, and I experimented with colour, light and texture, hoping that creative and embodied modes of expression could generate words that resonated (Leavy, 2015; Sweet et al., 2020). Rather than encouraging the joy and play of discovery, however, these drawing classes followed a painfully rigid path of deconstruction that filled me with anxiety and self-doubt.

Memories of emotional encounters are particularly vivid. Overrun by the same intense emotions, the line between the past and the present disintegrates. Panic stirs when I recall the first day of class. My heart pounds as I feel the firmness of the locked door handle between my fingers, and relief floods my body when I recall the sign – please use the entrance on the top floor. I remember walking hurriedly up to the second floor, where a lady dressed in loud colours directed me downstairs without looking up from her screen. It feels like yesterday. My shoulders relax as I feel the warmth and light of sunshine streaming through the windows, and my legs – reluctant to move downstairs – become heavy. Without access to sunlight, the chill in the air makes it seem like late afternoon. My stomach sinks when the teacher directs me to copy the notes from the board . . . landscape . . . geometric shapes . . . vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines. Her words are phrased as an instruction, rather than a suggestion, and the weight of theory makes it difficult to breathe. The teacher declares that we will be “learning” how to hold a pencil, and my ears burn when she singles me out for holding it too close to the tip. Breathe . . . just breathe . . . She instructs us to glide the pencil along the page, while supporting it with a bent pinky, and surprise overtakes when I realise how the pinky’s positioning offsets my lack of balance, allowing the hand to gain momentum. “The pencil’s movement must be powered by the arm, not the hand,” my teacher admonishes, reminding us of the body’s interconnected wisdom.

Declarations of “must” and “never” make me nervous since presenting only one “right” way excludes all others. Her deconstructive approach is not unlike the impenetrable process of assembling furniture, where each step is explicitly laid out. Repetition, accuracy and control minimise guesswork but diminish the joy of creativity and play. A similar process manifests in writing academically, where objectivity and scientific rationalism are prioritised over subjectivity. The measurable is valued over the immeasurable, and we lose out on what logic cannot comprehend. Despite my reservations, the decisive – up – down – up – down – motions of my teacher’s arm reveal the confidence of discipline, and having filled up the page with lines, she declares that we are ready to move on to circles. After drawing a few circles in the air – without touching the paper – she dips her pencil in one swift motion so that a curved line begins to appear. When she finally lifts it, a perfect circle emerges. I want to clap out in delight. Each motion appears so simple. First, you rotate your arm so that it follows your mind’s eye, tracing the air multiple times with circular motions until your body gets a feel for shape and size. Having drawn several circles with the pinky resting on a page, your body has a feel for a perfectly proportioned circle. Then, you can finally drop your pencil onto the page. Creating almost perfect circles in a matter of minutes – without tracing them from a stencil – is strangely comforting. I look at my hands in a new light. My fingers apply the slightest of pressures to direct the pencil’s movement, hinting at an immediacy and versatility of knowing.

“Art is all about control!” my drawing teacher interjects. Never having considered art this way before, I feel confused. The deconstructive method appears fail-safe, but the compulsion to avoid mistakes overpowers my joy. Replication – rather than creation – becomes the primary goal. I replay the day’s events over in my head feeling conflicted, questioning, is art a technical craft built on practice and discipline or more of an inner state of creativity and inspiration? If so, what makes something a work of art? Despite my confusion, I am convinced of beauty’s inexplicable authority. It reverberates through my being and transports me into vivid otherworldly spaces, such as the expansive sound of ocean waves crashing at night. These intoxicating sensations are so visceral that they cannot be logically deconstructed. Similar to an act of grace, they appear unexpectedly out of the blue, like a gift that is given freely. Beauty is captured in fleetingness. Like how a cherry blossom feels immeasurably precious because it only lasts for a few days, there is a poignancy to the bloom of youth. Impermanence enhances vulnerability but simultaneously heightens our appreciation. Does the secret to composing powerfully impactful prose reside in relaying beauty’s paradox, and if so, how can we craft something that lasts both an eternity and a moment? Perhaps the secret lies in our most vulnerable moments, where we can write from a place of complete openness.

Illness and the Search for Style

There is an eloquence to our vulnerabilities. It affirms the singularity of human experience and reveals a rarely disclosed world. Our vulnerabilities convey what is at stake and expose what we hold close to our heart. This soft hidden underbelly can become visible, however, through life-altering experiences, such as a debilitating illness, as Frank (2004) solemnly declares, “illness may be necessary to realize all we can become as humans” (p. 9). Not only is this experience challenging in itself, its unspeakability enhances our suffering. My most honest moments have similarly occurred when a maelstrom of physical and emotional ailments would leave me staring into the abyss. As I search for a writing style of my own, the gifts of awakening within these fractures and fissures call out to me. The intense vulnerability of illness resonates with the revelations of beauty, which are equally difficult to capture. Both lay things bare. A terminal diagnosis, for instance, can strip individuals of pretence and falsity by bringing our mortality to the surface. Such clarity is also afforded through beauty, which consumes us so entirely that we lose sight of everything else. Perhaps exploring these parallels between the intensity of suffering and awe can help shed light on vivid modes of expression that defy static words.

There is no language that adequately captures the being of illness, which Broyard (1992) experiences as a series of “disconnected shocks” that bring about chaos and incoherence (p. 19). The ill body has no predictable narrative; it does not function in normal or familiar ways. I fell into this bewildering state after experiencing a back injury shortly after the birth of my first child (Yoo, 2019). I had been juggling multiple casual contracts and a young baby when I could no longer put on socks or lift him out of his cot (Yoo, 2019). I had no way of moving forward with my narrative and so I lost my words. Schweizer (2000) describes the claustrophobia of illness and “its unsharability, and the feeling of an inescapable, hermetic space” (p. 231). The embodied nature of illness makes it impossible to share, and so our realities remain off limits. Depicting the raw bewilderment and suffocation of illness requires a skill unlike no other, as Schweizer (1995) surmises, “if suffering is in the unbearable, silent body rather than in the sharable disembodied language of its narratives, how then can suffering speak?” (para.4). The unspeakability of my body’s betrayal left me looking for words. None could describe the helplessness I felt at the loss of an able body.

Illness and injury can leave us without a viable narrative. Schweizer (2000) describes the dilemma of suffering, where our most “intimate” and “indubitable possession” disappears upon revelation because of its unspeakability (p. 232). Illness also does not conform to a narrative structure since it destroys one’s sense of temporality (Frank, 1997/2005). It creates an incoherent “non-plot,” where life is lived “without sequence or causality . . . [with] no mediation, only immediacy;” a linear time sequence does not exist since the future is uncertain and the present is disconnected from the past (Frank, 1997/2005, p. 98). The ill may find it challenging to tell their stories because there is no assurance of continuation, making life “. . . a series of present-tense assaults” (p. xv). The ways in which they existed are no longer possible. Moreover, their many bodily disruptions may hinder them from constructing clear and lucid accounts, further fragmenting their fragile sense of being and leaving them doubtful of whether their story is worth listening to. The story of my injured body was something that I was desperate to deny as it meant that I could not look after my child or be gainfully employed. What positive meaning could I derive from this experience?

Ever since this moment, I have been looking for words to express the inexpressible. Searching for meaning beyond functionality has brought me to aesthetically and poetically crafted accounts of illness, which are full of revelation. Words cannot convey the marvel of Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated by My Illness. As a book reviewer for The New York Times, his literary skills are evident, but his intimate account of illness is truly intoxicating. Broyard (1992) can craft such beautiful prose because he is entranced by the clarity of his cancer diagnosis. His terminal condition sets him a “real” deadline, concentrating his desire and galvanising him to act; it paradoxically sharpens his curiosity and enhances his lust for life, causing him to declare,

I had dawdled through life up to that point, and when the doctor told me I was ill it was like an immense electric shock. I was galvanised. I was a new person. All of my trivial selves fell away, and I was reduced to essence. (pp. 37–38)

Dawdling

My school teachers accused me of dawdling when I took too long for something, relaying their disapproval over time ill-spent. Dawdling through life, however, suggests a much-prolonged period of mindlessness, where someone takes a “back seat” in life – thinking that they will live forever. Broyard’s (1992) diagnosis shatters this illusion of limitless time, and this closer-than-anticipated expiration date both alarms and rejuvenates. It transforms his existence from a “familiar, no-longer-thrilling old flame” to a “brand-new infatuation” (p. 7). His mindless dawdling comes to a swift end through his shocking diagnosis, which cultivates wonder and delight. Through anticipating his body’s demise, Broyard (1992) senses time’s infinite preciousness and finds the resolve to draw conclusions and to say – this is who I am. He sifts through the noise to find perspective and to “see everything with a summarizing eye,” adding a sharpness to every thought, feeling and action, so that all empty posturing and trivialities disappear (p. 6). In writing without a filter, he can express his craziness – undiluted and uncensored – with “all its garish colors” (p. 23). Who would have realised that vulnerability had such a beautiful hidden underbelly? Like suffering, beauty evokes the heights of rawness and intensity, so when coming face to face with beauty’s truth – all noise falls away. Like truth, beauty requires no explanation.

Both suffering’s silence and beauty’s awe demand expression and action. Schweizer (2000) reflects on how beauty and suffering must be expressed and responded to through the German proverb, Weh spricht: vergeh, which is translated as “woe, speaks: Go” (p. 229). He asserts that suffering’s cry must be articulated. When expressed, it acquires a tangible form that can be witnessed. Then, a response can ensue. For instance, suffering is a catalyst for action because it motivates individuals to alleviate its burden (Schweizer, 2000). Suffering, by its nature, demands a response since our instinctive response – in the face of pain – is to try and take it away. Desperate for relief, I drew on the momentum of affect to craft words. Thoughts became the building blocks for dialogue, cultivating opportunities to negotiate meaning. Not surprisingly, the more beautiful the words, the more the light can shine through the cracks – illuminating a creative path for action.

Experiences That Invite the Poetic

Illness can dis-able by bringing about a loss of functionality. Less able to engage in external activities, we find ourselves sequestered within a “secretive narrow space” that increasingly separates us from the world (Schweizer, 2000, p. 231). This narrowing, however, can be a blessing in disguise by giving us the opportunity to cultivate a richer inner life. The ill, for example, may develop the imaginative capacity to determine a “self” that they can live with, despite their many physical constraints (Frank, 2004). Broyard (1992) equally gravitates towards the poetic and metaphorical when the familiar rhythms of his body are harshly disrupted. He describes illness and dying as a “kind of poetry,” perceiving the latter to be a derangement of the senses. While the orderly and overly structured nature of prose cannot convey illness’ disorder, metaphors – like poetry – are versatile enough to “express the bafflement, the panic combined with beatitude, of the threatened person” (p. 18). Their indirect and abstract nature helps him to capture what is difficult to confront. An ill person may, for instance, describe themselves as being a “boat without a rudder” to convey their groundlessness, rather than sharing the unspeakable details of their condition. The inadequacy of prose leads us towards the expansive medium of the poetic to convey beauty, which goes beyond the literal to encompass the immeasurable.

Since poetry conveys a derangement of the senses, a poetic disposition can help us to appreciate the incomprehensibility of illness. Broyard (1992) identifies poetic awareness as a compass for navigating suffering, relating how a doctor becomes a mere “technician” without it since they cannot transform raw material into a “poem of a diagnosis” (p. 4). This technician considers the body as an instrument of functionality that must be fixed. Because Broyard’s (1992) terminal diagnosis plunges him into a “literature of extreme situations” that profoundly tests his soul, he requires a doctor with a poetic constitution, who can attend to both the soul and the body (p. 4). Such spiritual discernment allows doctors to comprehend how illness can transfigure by “weaken[ing] the worst parts and strengthen[ing] the best” (Broyard, 1992, p. 41). Here, a deteriorating body can force us to draw on our inner resources so that we can find meaning even in the direst situations. Without this sense-making capacity, Broyard (1992) believes that we lose our will to live and succumb to our illness, disclosing,

To die is to be no longer human, to be dehumanized – and I think that language, speech, stories, or narratives are the most effective ways to keep our humanity alive. To remain silent is literally to close down the shop of one’s humanity. (p. 20)

Seeking beauty also implies the hope of goodness, as without an aesthetic and poetic disposition, we cannot perceive, let alone appreciate beauty’s presence. Moreover, in our pursuit of wonder, we are not passive and numb – like a mute and inanimate object, but the more we pursue the beautiful, subjective and poetic, the more we enrich these parts of ourselves.

A poetic lens can deepen our appreciation for life’s wonders. It slows down our gaze so that we can perceive rich meaning even within the silences (Schweizer, 2000). This capacity to find beauty is particularly valuable for the sick due to the silence imposed by their suffering. Moreover, literature provides the sufferer with a means of expression, enabling these painful lulls to become a space of “empathy and mourning” (Schweizer, 2000, p. 237). In mourning, we come to terms with the realities of loss and pain to become receptive to growth, and through extending empathy, we partake in another’s suffering to offer comfort. In both occasions, the sufferer and witness exercise their ethical capacity to “sit” with another. The poetic alleviates the harm incurred by knowledge, which “hastens to cure,” by delaying and slowing down the reader’s gaze (Schweizer, 2000, p. 237). The literary and the poetic, rather than logic, thus conveys the mystery of suffering, which is “the very language of the aesthetic, a language without any meaning other than its own occurrence, might echo the mysterious occurrence of suffering” (Schweizer, 1995, para.5). The aesthetic not only slows down our gaze but also gives full expression to suffering’s mystery through its expansive lens.

The Dialogical Opportunities of Illness

Illness and suffering invite dialogue. The ill are compelled to “speak” their pain so that their suffering can take on a tangible form. In “speaking” their suffering aloud, their soul’s turmoil can be witnessed, as Schweizer (2000) explains, “Suffering gives occasion to the subject to speak, who thus becomes the other whom language addresses” (p. 233). Spoken aloud, suffering can be better understood since it is transcribed into a narrative form (Schweizer, 2000). Moreover, the sufferer becomes self-reflexive through listening to their cries, generating an intersubjective space where the “self” also becomes the “other.” Within this dialogical relationship, meaning can evolve. Through speaking and listening to their soul’s cry, an individual may eventually come to terms with their unfathomable experiences to find meaning and purpose. At the time of writing about my injury, I did not know that these transformations had been taking place. In fact, by articulating suffering, the “I,” it became the “other,” which then formed a “we.” Hearing these raw expressions was the beginning of a reflexive dialogue that allowed meaning to take shape, and these movements formed the fresh gusts of wind that nudged my stranded vessel free.

A witness acts to unravel suffering’s mysterious power. Such empathetic witnessing is vital for the sick individual, who is given the monumental task of rising up like a phoenix from the ashes of their diagnosis (Frank, 1997/2005). Without an observer’s compassionate witnessing, the sick person may overlook their courage and any meaning within their suffering. Broyard (1992) asserts that the ill require an “appreciative critical grasp of [their] situation” (p. 44), rather than love, because of suffering’s transformative impact. Future plans, which had assumed the presence of a healthy and functional body, are no longer possible, and in the absence of a predictable narrative, they may find themselves “always on the brink of a revelation” (Broyard, 1992, p. 44). These acts of witnessing are vital spaces for the sick to process their learnings. For example, when the frightening “primitive picture” of his mortality dawns on him, Broyard (1992) is motivated to write freely – without fear – at “the extremity of life” to craft intoxicating words (p. 10). Rather than becoming diminished by his illness, he draws on his revelations to revitalise both his craft and life; as such, he requires a physician who can appreciate how powerful words can be forged through suffering’s fire.

Compassionate witnessing requires the imagination and intersubjectivity of the poetic. Broyard (1992) asserts that a witness requires a poetic disposition to look beyond the unintelligible to comprehend what is deeply singular, that is, the individual’s suffering. He believes that their compassion, which emerges from a richness of personhood, “conveys the timbre, the rhythm, the diction and the music of his (sic) humanity” (p. 53). Through listening to the music of their own humanity, doctors can subsequently relate to their patient’s suffering, as Schweizer (2000) relays, “The ability to recognize the other comes from the otherness of subjectivity. You can empathize with the other only if you are one too” (p. 239). Such physicians can listen attentively to their patients from a mutual place of subjectivity, which prevents them from reducing the ill person to their diagnosis (Broyard, 1992). These empathetic practitioners keep their patients’ inner flame alight by acknowledging their rich internal world, rather than simply seeing them as a body to treat. They can help their patients to derive meaning from their struggles through acknowledging the latitude and largesse brought about by life’s misfortunes (Roland, 2020). These deep connective vibrations of resonance are made known to Hitchens (2012) when a cancer of his oesophagus renders him unable to speak, as he states,

In the medical literature, the vocal “chord” is a mere “fold,” a piece of gristle that strives to reach out and touch its twin, thus producing the possibility of sound effects. But I feel that there must be a deep relationship with the word “chord”: the resonant vibration that can stir memory, produce music, evoke love, bring tears, move crowds to pity and mobs to passion. (pp. 53–54)

The act of witnessing can enrich the soul. A witness can access an ill person’s embodied revelations – which are withheld from the healthy and able-bodied – to realise their moral calling. Frank (2004) asserts that the healer is shaped through their interactions with their patients, becoming more human through glimpsing the sick person’s humanity, relaying, “For the physician, the patient’s healing presence elicits a new response to the question, ‘Who am I?’ that understands ‘I’ as coming to be for the first time as the subject of the patient’s address” (p. 104). As a physician compassionately responds to their patient’s suffering, they form their “I.” In other words, they become healers through the act of healing itself. The self accordingly exists through the roles and actions they take in relation to others (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 99). Since meaningful actions arise from relationships, Gergen (2021) consequently asserts that we need to cultivate our dialogical capacity by engaging others. Health professionals accordingly have “everything to gain by letting the sick man (sic) into his heart” since this may bring them into contact with “the wonder, terror and exaltation of being on the edge of being, between the natural and the supernatural” (Broyard, 1992, p. 57). Indeed, the imaginative and cognitive skills of “narrative competence” are increasingly taught to medical students to help them “take in and appreciate the representation – and, therefore, the reality- of another” (Charon, 2006, p. 113). In other words, exploring illness narratives can help readers acquire the skills of narrative competence, which include attention, representation and affiliation, enabling readers to form bonds with others by imaginatively entering and giving expression to their worlds (Charon, 2006).

Academic writers can also learn from reading the work of fearless writers who have been seared by life’s flames. I am equally drawn to writers such as Broyard (1992) and Hitchens (2012), who are conscious of time’s preciousness. They are gifted with the clarity to write at “in the direction of truth . . . where blindness and light meet” (Cixous, 1993, pp. 36–38). Withing these intense life moments, they can “discover that there is more than one world and that the world isn’t what we think it is” (Hitchens, 2012, p. 10). They write to reveal truths that may be inaccessible to the healthy. Inspired by their revelations, I find myself asking the question, “Who am I?” and “How should I live?” Confronted by the creative possibilities within a single moment, we can imagine other vibrant ways of being. The beautiful also elicits a whole-heartedness. For example, when reading sublime prose, the reader acknowledges its sacredness and becomes present to the writer’s words, as Frank (2004) relays, “The written text shows the reader a face that looks at me and calls home. It lays claim to me. . . This generosity calls for a response of here-I-am from the reader” (p. 77). The generosity displayed through the writer’s vulnerability evokes the reader’s full-bodied presence, and this “here-I-am” state not only enables mutual care and understanding but also allows the reader’s consciousness to broaden as they accommodate the writer’s colourful subjectivities. By enriching their capacity to listen, feel and imagine, they can acquire the “moral imagination” to craft good stories for themselves and others (Frank, 2004, p. 104). They fulfil their existential calling by helping the sufferer to “speak” about the truth of their existence so that it can take on a narrative meaning, thereby preventing the sufferer from “reced[ing] into the mute materiality of her pain” (Schweizer, 2000, p. 239). Instead of succumbing to helplessness, the sufferer can express the indomitability of their spirit by transcending their suffering.

Finally, in recognising our unfinalisability, we become receptive to life’s mystery and possibility. By acknowledging this “unfinalability” of the other, we can speak “to” rather than “about” them, rather than minimising or cutting short by attaching labels (Frank, 2004, p. 71). Indeed, doctors who adopt this dialogical lens can reconstitute their roles via their patients’ voices to reclaim their moral identity (Frank, 2004). They are empathetically receptive to the sick person’s often unintelligible expressions and can hence offer them relief from the isolation imposed by illness. Such physicians take on board the “moral possibility, not moral burden” of their work through accounting for and honouring their patients’ suffering (Frank, 2004, p. 58). Beauty is also unfinal in its capacity to evoke more beautiful instances; it is dialogical in how it inspires the beholder to engage in further creative acts.

Expressing Style in Living the “Good” Life

Style, or a richness of taste, encompasses the pleasures of the sensual and sensory. When we mindfully walk down the street, we open ourselves up to the delight of soaking in the warmth of the sunlight on one’s face and the wind in one’s hair. The walk itself has value because it is a source of pleasure that is to be savoured, rather than being a means to an end. Appreciating and cultivating such vibrant and full-bodied experiences forms a path to a purposeful life, as Perullo and Montanari (2016) write, “Pleasure transforms mere passivity into active sensibility: into perception” (p. 31). Instead of thoughtlessly occupying space and time, pleasure enables us to invest individual moments with meaning as we pay attention to what gives us joy. In the place of mindless consumption, we develop a quality of taste to enjoy what holds more lasting value. Perception consequently equates to intentionality since it involves attending to significance. Our gaze focuses on and filters out, it “discerns” and reveals a deeper intelligence. Perullo and Montanari (2016) assert how our sense of style provides a framework for deciphering “quality,” maintaining how we draw on this unique lens to draw connections “between ‘good’ as (gustatory) pleasure and the good- ultimate goal of human life, what makes life worth living . . . [which] is the manifesto for a new way of living” (p. 31). A manifesto of a “good life” subsequently revolves around the pursuit of significance, which is made known through pleasure.

To live “well,” we seek an aesthetic path that celebrates beauty and pleasure. We pursue vitality to develop a vibrant sense of style. In battling his illness, Broyard (1992) regards style to be a requisite for his doctors since it allows them to “see” or “hear” him and asserts that doctors without “style” have little discernment and personality. He considers the alternative – of bland politeness – to be highly offensive because it presents no defence against illness. Broyard (1992) condemns one doctor for having no “tragic sense of life . . . no furious desire to oppose himself to fate” (p. 36), asserting that without this tragic sensibility, physicians cannot understand the significance of human life and fight against its loss. He bemoans the “deliberately deliberate” tone of a physician who is only playing a role and cannot bear witness to an ill person’s immense courage and suffering (p. 36). Broyard (1992) declares that he cannot die under the care of such individuals, who cannot comprehend the spiritual growth attainable through suffering’s flame. Since style is synonymous with vitality, it becomes his primary defence against a helpless death, as he asserts,

Being ill and dying is largely, to a great degree, a matter of style. My intention is to show people who are ill- and we will all be ill someday – that it’s not the end of their world as they know it, that they can go on being themselves, perhaps even more so than before. (p. 61)

The ill may become acutely aware of style’s significance due to the loss of physical vitality. When Broyard (1992) realises that he is terminally ill, he desperately fights against the losses by writing evocatively about his illness. He understands how vitality can be uncovered, and even enriched through his suffering, since a deteriorating body causes him to look inward for a vital stream. He senses that failing to cultivate this inner flame – especially when he is ill – means falling out of love with himself and losing the will to live. In confronting his mortality, “the eloquence of being alive, the fervor of the survivor” forms his greatest weapon against death (p. 5). Style forms a powerful defence against the self-annihilating effects of illness by elevating him beyond his diagnosis. Through writing stylishly, Broyard (1992) uncovers his raison d’être, that is, his reason for living, affirming “The link between good as (gustory) pleasure and the good – the ultimate goal of human life, what makes life worth living” (Perullo & Montanari, 2016, p. 49). Similar to how living can become merely existing, we may extinguish one’s spirit by composing lifeless words. Mindful of this fate, academic writers need to cultivate words that vitalise.

The subjectivities underpinning one’s style are not transient or interchangeable; separate from the material body, they do not succumb to decay. Style or taste, therefore, does not wane over time. Broyard (1992) demonstrates this point as an awareness of his mortality inflames him with a desire to pursue a sense of style that transcends, as he announces, “I’m filled with desire – to live, to write, to do everything. Desire itself is a kind of immortality” (p. 4). Alexandra Broyard, Anatole’s wife, likewise describes how his endeavours to communicate ideas of style, form and presence were motivated by the desire for transcendence, relating, “Style for Anatole was a bid for immortality, his defense against the darkness. He also saw it as society’s defense against chaos and formlessness” (p. 134). An appreciation of style keeps the formlessness of illness at bay, allowing him to tell the “truth” of his suffering to “turn[s] his illness into a good story” for himself and others (p. 62). In writing stylishly about his encounters with illness, he transcends the physical self – that perishes – to craft imperishable words that are retained in the reader’s minds. Through this process, he transforms his account of suffering into a “good story.”

An evolving style enables us to manoeuvre through the world to generate impactful words and experiences. Perullo and Montanari (2016) assert how a fluidity of style allows us to “move skillfully according to rhythms of experience” to respond authentically and meaningfully to our encounters (p. 118). They introduce the term savoir-faire to affirm the value of a “flexibility of taste experience,” relaying the importance of moving with “flexibility, regulation and transition” (p. 115). Instead of being stuck within a fixed frame that stagnates, a flexibility of style helps us to flow with the rhythms of unfolding experience so that we can continuously reinvent ourselves. As such, Perullo and Montanari (2016) liken wisdom to a “suggestion” rather than a binding rule, so that no option is precluded; they note how such openness generates multiple taste experiences that cultivate a flexible and nuanced perspective, relaying, “A sage possesses a wisdom that Greeks called phronesis; it is through phronesis that a person is able to orient herself in different life situations and to choose what is most appropriate” (p. 118). Wisdom thereby does not reside in the extent of one’s knowledge, but in the capacity for knowing to evolve. It is measured by the flexibility of constructing “transitional thought[s] between different, even extreme or opposite positions in the continuum of experience,” where we tune our perceptions – like a musical instrument – to align ourselves to “the flow of experience” (Perullo & Montanari, 2016, p. 126). Here, our sense of style or our “personal proclivities [act] as a filter in the framework of negotiation and interaction,” helping us to devise the colourful encounters that underpin an authentic and meaningful life (Perullo & Montanari, 2016, p. 124). In writing stylish words, academic writers can tune their sensibilities to become receptive to the rich flow of experience.

Crafting Beautiful Prose

My back injury had signified the end of the narratives I had been writing. Unable to comprehend what lay ahead, I lost my words. But locked in my body, and full of despair, I found myself returning to the page for relief. I simply wrote and wrote, and what emerged felt like the senseless guttural groans of childbirth. This “noise” was worlds apart from the stylish fashionable models on glossy magazine front covers or Broyard’s beautifully crafted prose. After this initial outpouring, something new surprisingly emerged. It was a story of my son, who had accidentally ventured into a crisis of his own through losing his two baby teeth (Yoo, 2019). This loss had evoked an unforeseeable and irrational existential terror. “They will grow back,” I soothed, as I gently patted back, waiting for his sobs to subside. Unbeknownst to him, he had slipped into a terrifying world that he could not yet comprehend. If his teeth could be so easily lost, what did that mean for his other body parts? This line of reasoning led him to the unconscious realisation of his mortality. His body had understood, even though his mind had yet to catch on. I noticed this because I too had recently felt such terror. When the initial shock gradually subsided, I began searching for words that “embodied” my suffering and compassion, attempting to recreate a lived moment through the felt-sense. Like Hitchens (2012), I playfully engaged with the contours of each word and phrase to “hit upon the elusive, magical mot juste” (p. 52). Each inscription became a brushstroke, rendering colour, texture and light into meaning.

Words crafted with style convey the otherworldly. Their expansiveness breaks us free from the everyday to transport us to vibrant meanings. Such words can be found within Broyard’s (1992) lyrical prose, where death forms his surprising source of inspiration. The anticipation of death evokes life, concentrating his desire for life and teaching him how to savour the pleasures of beauty. Broyard (1992) consumes beauty like a person starving for air; it resuscitates his ailing body and evokes his sense of wonder and delight, making his prose intoxicate and explode with curiosity, wit and desire. Such beautiful words can help us fall in love with the world and ourselves again, keeping us alive, even when our bodies deteriorate. And yet, these spaces may not always be accessible on Broyard’s terms. For instance, Broyard has been criticised for glorifying and romanticising the trauma of cancer and also for his “bourgeois values,” where he espouses a position of social and linguistic privilege (Major, 2002, p. 114). His literary skills are evident through his rich use of metaphors, which he draws on to convey a richness of style that is whimsical, explorative and paradoxical (Wohlmann, 2022). It is important, however, to acknowledge that not all individuals have equal access to the interpretive or expressive resources needed to render illness meaningful through literary prose. In the context of illness, this suggests that patients from marginalised backgrounds may struggle to narrate their suffering within available cultural and linguistic frameworks (Fricker, 2007). Recognising this limitation introduces an important ethical dimension, tempering Broyard’s poetic vision with an awareness of the social barriers that inhibit meaning-making. At the same time, there are many avenues – beyond prose – for expressing the revelations of both beauty and suffering, highlighting academia’s need to embrace a more expansive approach to inquiry and expression.

The Tension Between “Naked” and “Dressed” Taste

In our attempts to express our embodied knowing, we search for a vibrant sense of style, as without style, our worlds feel bland and ordinary. To explore beauty and style in writing academically, I have returned to my childhood passion of art-making, but learning the technical skills of drawing has only increased my confusion about the essence of my craft. Is art built on the disciplined practice of technique or the spontaneous outpourings of creativity? This brings to mind Perullo and Montanari’s (2016) statement about the differences between “naked pleasure and dressed taste,” where the latter conveys our raw embodied sensations, while dressed taste presents an “informed” perspective (p. 48). If both the “naked” and “dressed” reflect a sense of style and taste, does an understanding of beauty then encompass both? The focus on “dressed” taste emerges in my drawing classes, where technical mastery appears to lay the groundwork for creative practice. Such an analytical path is not dissimilar to writing academically, where objectivity equates to validity. But if the value of an artwork lies in the intimacy and uniqueness of experience, perhaps value lies in transcending technique and forging an embodied style that is singular to us.

This tension between the discipline of technique and the effortless and joyful expression of one’s style is evident in Lloyd and Smith (2024)’s reflections on the rhythms of salsa dancing. They relate the experiences of one world champion salsa dancer who rises beyond technical mastery by “feel[ing] the rhythm in every part of [their] body” (p. 179). Technique is personalised through one’s skin, where dancers gain expertise by making each step their own (Lloyd & Smith, 2024). Such whole-hearted performances are mesmerising because they provide a window into one’s soul. Technique – fully mastered – is imbued with an intangible essence or style that allows individuals to create their own rules. Writers, who are well-versed in following the rules of academic writing discourse, can also reach the pinnacle of their craft by uncovering a writing style that speaks “of” and “about” them. By drawing on their subjectivities to craft evocative prose, they demonstrate a deeply embodied knowledge of their discipline (Freeman, 2019). Such work exudes a beauty and a truth that affirms our creative and ethical potential.

The Body Has the Final Word

I stare at my rough drawings with a sigh. Endless practice is required to capture the essence, and it is sometimes hard to justify the time. Despite my reservations, my embodied fatigue suggests deeper forces at work. This unconscious labour, of eyes and hands engaging in observation and visceral play, and of combining lines, shapes and tones to relay a felt-sense, unveils a deeper knowing that is derived from moving our bodies (Manning, 2016; Snowber, 2016). When senses become heightened, whether it be through reading evocative accounts, seeing beautiful works of art or listening to the sublime, I am brought back to places of truth and beauty, where words hang in the balance of death and life, and all peripheral noise fades away. In our search for style, academic writers must, therefore, draw on their bodies to uncover words that convey these truths. Trusting that these affective and embodied rhythms lead to vitality, we remain open to its mystery, despite the suffering this causes. If expressing voice and style restores and revitalises, academic writers need to move beyond logic to forge a sense of style that brings both meaning – and themselves – to life.