Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living

by Mark C. Taylor

In the fall of 2005, Mark C. Taylor, the controversial public intellectual and widely respected scholar, suddenly fell critically ill. For two days a team of forty doctors, many of whom thought he would not live, fought to save him. Taylor would eventually recover, but only to face a new threat: surgery for cancer. "These experiences have changed me in ways I am still struggling to understand," Taylor writes in this absorbing memoir. "After the past year, I am persuaded that I have done enough fieldwork to write a book that combines philosophical and theological reflection with autobiographical narrative. Writing is not only possible but actually seems necessary."

Field Notes from Elsewhere is Taylor's unforgettable, inverted journey from death to life. Each of his memoir's fifty-two chapters and accompanying photographs recounts a morning-to-evening experience with sickness and convalescence, mingling humor and hope with a deep exploration of human frailty and, conversely, resilience. When we confront the end of life, Taylor explains, the axis of the lived world shifts, and everything must be reevaluated. As Taylor sorts through his remembrances, much that once seemed familiar becomes strange, paradoxical, and contradictory. He reads his experience with and against ghosts from his past, recasting the meaning of mortality, sacrifice, solitude, and abandonment, along with a host of other issues, in light of modern ways of dying. "You never come back from elsewhere," Taylor concludes, "because elsewhere always comes back with you."

Genres: Philosophy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2009

About the author

Mark C. Taylor, Ph.D. (Religious Studies, Harvard University, 1973; B.A., Wesleyan University, 1968), is a philosopher of religion who chaired the Department of Religion at Columbia University 2007–2015. Previously, he was Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts), where he began his teaching career in 1973.

Reviews

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting yet unevenly and sometimes clunky book. I bought the book thinking I'd add it to my growing library of health humanities books, but after reading it I've decided to pass it on instead. It's just not good enough. Irritating and meaningless (to me) riffs on baseball and guns and lamentations on the increasing use of technology in the classroom (yawn)—and very strange use of frequent and silly photographs throughout the text—all added up to an unsatisfying and not particularly thought-provoking book. He also likes to name-drop in a very pretentious way that is off-putting.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brilliant mind at work -- the best pieces of delightful, kept me awake turning them over in my mind, but not enough of them had that effect.