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Teach Us to Sit Still
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Review
“Tim Parks has written an intensely personal response to a confrontation with that most dreaded of terrors: the indications of a potentially fatal medical condition. Parks gives a clear-sighted, thoughtful and strangely moving account of his own experiences, and brings to them an uncommon blend of wit, lightly-worn scholarship, and heartbreaking candour. A remarkable book.”--Miranda Seymour
"a cool, sceptical observer of the human condition... Teach Us to Sit Still deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness"--J M Coetzee
“A mystery story written with extraordinary nerve and eloquence, Teach Us To Sit Still traces the contradictions in the author’s character and his attempt to bring body and mind together and escape from a seriously debilitating condition. The result is harrowing, mordant, and unforgettable.”--David Shields
“This is a startlingly brave book – embarrassing health problems don’t usually make comfortable friendships with philosophy, art and history, seasoned with a dash of Buddhist meditation. But since Tim Parks writes so wonderfully well and is so genuinely clever it works. It works very well indeed. Sensible, lyrical, wide ranging, generous hearted and in places very touching."--Sarah Maitland
“A brilliantly clear book on matters that are still far from clear to us.”--George Szirtes
“A searingly honest, viscerally vivid, darkly comic self-examination of the connections between writing, personality and health. Once I started reading it, I didn’t want to stop.”--David Lodge
"(it) made me laugh; it made me cry; and it made me seriously think about taking up Vispassana meditation"--The Times
"Parks writes wonderfully well about his body as he is reluctantly reconciled to its existence alongside his mind."--Daily Express
"Parks is an excellent writer, capable of writing wittily and with great beauty about the near indefinable."--Seven (Sunday Telegraph)
"funny, painful and quietly profound book"--The Scotsman
"beautifully written and painfully honest... a fascinating, perceptive and rewarding read"--The Big Issue
"Teach Us to Sit Still is a small triumph of narrative artistry, luxuriantly written and full of bone-dry humour."--The Spectator
"A movingly honest book that is about a great deal more than breathing and meditation."--The Lady
"A lovely, well-told story... Parks is a conscientious and expert companion whom it is hard not to like."--The Observer
"Its no easy read. But Teach Us To Sit Still is about facing up to mortality, and we cannot have too many honest reports of that"--Evening Standard
"Tim Parks' account of curing his ill health through meditation is intensely engaging."--The Sunday Times
"[a] wonderful, paradoxical book"--The Guardian
"Even those free of illness will find Parks's journey gives us much to ponder about the effects of modern living"--Metro
"a cool, sceptical observer of the human condition... Teach Us to Sit Still deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness"--J M Coetzee
“A mystery story written with extraordinary nerve and eloquence, Teach Us To Sit Still traces the contradictions in the author’s character and his attempt to bring body and mind together and escape from a seriously debilitating condition. The result is harrowing, mordant, and unforgettable.”--David Shields
“This is a startlingly brave book – embarrassing health problems don’t usually make comfortable friendships with philosophy, art and history, seasoned with a dash of Buddhist meditation. But since Tim Parks writes so wonderfully well and is so genuinely clever it works. It works very well indeed. Sensible, lyrical, wide ranging, generous hearted and in places very touching."--Sarah Maitland
“A brilliantly clear book on matters that are still far from clear to us.”--George Szirtes
“A searingly honest, viscerally vivid, darkly comic self-examination of the connections between writing, personality and health. Once I started reading it, I didn’t want to stop.”--David Lodge
"(it) made me laugh; it made me cry; and it made me seriously think about taking up Vispassana meditation"--The Times
"Parks writes wonderfully well about his body as he is reluctantly reconciled to its existence alongside his mind."--Daily Express
"Parks is an excellent writer, capable of writing wittily and with great beauty about the near indefinable."--Seven (Sunday Telegraph)
"funny, painful and quietly profound book"--The Scotsman
"beautifully written and painfully honest... a fascinating, perceptive and rewarding read"--The Big Issue
"Teach Us to Sit Still is a small triumph of narrative artistry, luxuriantly written and full of bone-dry humour."--The Spectator
"A movingly honest book that is about a great deal more than breathing and meditation."--The Lady
"A lovely, well-told story... Parks is a conscientious and expert companion whom it is hard not to like."--The Observer
"Its no easy read. But Teach Us To Sit Still is about facing up to mortality, and we cannot have too many honest reports of that"--Evening Standard
"Tim Parks' account of curing his ill health through meditation is intensely engaging."--The Sunday Times
"[a] wonderful, paradoxical book"--The Guardian
"Even those free of illness will find Parks's journey gives us much to ponder about the effects of modern living"--Metro
Review
"A small triumph of narrative artistry, luxuriantly written and full of bone-dry humor." The Spectator "A searingly honest, viscerally vivid, darkly comic self-examination of the connections between writing, personality and health." David Lodge "A mystery story written with extraordinary nerve and eloquence...The result is harrowing, mordant, and unforgettable." David Shields
--This text refers to an alternate
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
119 of 127 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Noted novelist and translator Tim Parks has departed from his usual themes to write this autobiographical account of his journey from a life dominated by acute pain to one where a reasonable equilibrium between body and soul enables him to live in relative comfort and healthy productivity.
Teach Us To Sit Still will be of great interest to anyone with a chronic medical condition which the doctors seem unable to cure, but also to anyone who is concerned about work/life balance and the long-term effects of ignoring the body's needs. I can't say I'm in any either of those categories but I still found it a fascinating read. But the book is not only about pain and a quest for healing, for Tim, being the writer and scholar that he is, digresses frequently into philosophical and literary themes which break up the stark accounts of medical processes.
Tim Parks developed a set of problems in the region of prostate, groin and pelvis which had a devastating effect on his life. The first part of the book describes the medical explorations which he had to undergo in order to seek a diagnosis. Any man reading the book is going to squirm with discomfort as Parks' recounts the procedures carried out on him, some of which make root canal work sound like a head massage.
I can only admire Tim for his candour in sharing with his readers the daily humiliations caused by his complaint. Nobody wants to hear a doctor say, "It has to hurt I'm afraid", and there is pain in such quantities I found I had to skip quickly through some paragraphs.
The tests he undergoes all show that there is nothing wrong with him. His relief at finding out that he does not after all have prostate cancer is tempered by having to go home to live with the condition, perhaps for ever. However, such is Tim's desperation, that he starts to investigate alternative forms of medicine, visiting an Ayuverdic practitioner who has interesting but bizarre things to say, and then finding a book by Doctor David Wise, A Headache in the Pelvis which seems to be a turning point in his journey towards recovery.
But it is the last third of the book in which we read of a kind of breakthrough - I am torn in writing this review in wanting to say what happens while not wanting to spoil the book. Let me say that Tim's decision to take up Vipassana meditation was fruitful in a variety of ways.
I think most people would recognise the need for more centredness in their lives, and by reading this book they will see how meditation practices could help them with niggling symptoms which inhabit the background of their lives. This is not a self-help book but rather an involving journey with a fine writer through things we all hope we don't have to deal with in our own lives.
Teach Us To Sit Still will be of great interest to anyone with a chronic medical condition which the doctors seem unable to cure, but also to anyone who is concerned about work/life balance and the long-term effects of ignoring the body's needs. I can't say I'm in any either of those categories but I still found it a fascinating read. But the book is not only about pain and a quest for healing, for Tim, being the writer and scholar that he is, digresses frequently into philosophical and literary themes which break up the stark accounts of medical processes.
Tim Parks developed a set of problems in the region of prostate, groin and pelvis which had a devastating effect on his life. The first part of the book describes the medical explorations which he had to undergo in order to seek a diagnosis. Any man reading the book is going to squirm with discomfort as Parks' recounts the procedures carried out on him, some of which make root canal work sound like a head massage.
I can only admire Tim for his candour in sharing with his readers the daily humiliations caused by his complaint. Nobody wants to hear a doctor say, "It has to hurt I'm afraid", and there is pain in such quantities I found I had to skip quickly through some paragraphs.
The tests he undergoes all show that there is nothing wrong with him. His relief at finding out that he does not after all have prostate cancer is tempered by having to go home to live with the condition, perhaps for ever. However, such is Tim's desperation, that he starts to investigate alternative forms of medicine, visiting an Ayuverdic practitioner who has interesting but bizarre things to say, and then finding a book by Doctor David Wise, A Headache in the Pelvis which seems to be a turning point in his journey towards recovery.
But it is the last third of the book in which we read of a kind of breakthrough - I am torn in writing this review in wanting to say what happens while not wanting to spoil the book. Let me say that Tim's decision to take up Vipassana meditation was fruitful in a variety of ways.
I think most people would recognise the need for more centredness in their lives, and by reading this book they will see how meditation practices could help them with niggling symptoms which inhabit the background of their lives. This is not a self-help book but rather an involving journey with a fine writer through things we all hope we don't have to deal with in our own lives.
34 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I enjoyed this books and would recommend it to others. But it is not quite what I was expecting from reading other reviews.
The first part details Tim Park's unsuccessful encounters with the Italian (and Harley Street) medical establishment as he tries to find out why he is in so much pain. Answer: it's a mystery, but they can, if he wishes, operate on his prostate and it might help. He decides against.
In the second part of the book, he gets to grips with the problem himself. Partly through reading a self-help manual he orders on the web. Partly through the experience of meditation. He doesn't actually go a bundle on either. He wonders whether the aim of the self-help book is really to sell more help (to be provided at more expense in California). He doesn't buy into Buddhist philosophy. But he does get (a lot) better.
Throughout this weaves the question of who he is and what has made him as he is. He says in the Introduction he wouldn't have written the book if getting better had meant going into psychotherapy and working out his relationship to his parents. In fact, he does work out his relationship to his father (now dead) and amends it. But this self-awareness comes from his meditation. You do also get a clear sense of what has made him and what he is like.
You will also find a fair bit of reflection on the nature of translation (through which the author makes his living in part), on DH Lawrence and Samuel Beckett.
In short, this is a very thought-provoking book - highly discursive, however - and one that raises more interesting questions than it answers!
The first part details Tim Park's unsuccessful encounters with the Italian (and Harley Street) medical establishment as he tries to find out why he is in so much pain. Answer: it's a mystery, but they can, if he wishes, operate on his prostate and it might help. He decides against.
In the second part of the book, he gets to grips with the problem himself. Partly through reading a self-help manual he orders on the web. Partly through the experience of meditation. He doesn't actually go a bundle on either. He wonders whether the aim of the self-help book is really to sell more help (to be provided at more expense in California). He doesn't buy into Buddhist philosophy. But he does get (a lot) better.
Throughout this weaves the question of who he is and what has made him as he is. He says in the Introduction he wouldn't have written the book if getting better had meant going into psychotherapy and working out his relationship to his parents. In fact, he does work out his relationship to his father (now dead) and amends it. But this self-awareness comes from his meditation. You do also get a clear sense of what has made him and what he is like.
You will also find a fair bit of reflection on the nature of translation (through which the author makes his living in part), on DH Lawrence and Samuel Beckett.
In short, this is a very thought-provoking book - highly discursive, however - and one that raises more interesting questions than it answers!
31 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a gem of a book. As the wife of someone who has spent many years suffering intermittently from prostatitis and chronic pelvic pain, and for whom it has had a particularly devastating impact over the past 6 months, I found it enormously reassuring - as well as enjoyable - to read Tim's story. CPP is not a life-threatening or even serious condition. But it can have a surprisingly corrosive effect, not just on the life of the person suffering from it but on all those close. And it's not always easy for those close bystanders (let alone more distant observers) to understand the pain and misery it causes or be continually patient and sympathetic when their own lives are put on hold as a result.
Tim Parks' symptoms, medical experiences and personal dilemmas have been unnervingly similar to those of my husband. As a woman, it is hard to appreciate quite what the pain must be like and why it is so utterly demoralising. Tim's descriptions have helped me better understand what my husband is going through; and his frankness about the mental anguish of trying to come to terms with a condition that seems astonishingly common yet so poorly understood (and too embarrassing for most people to discuss without sniggering) is hugely refreshing. Then to read his fascinating account of how he managed to come to terms with it all gives hope indeed. It should be required reading for anyone affected by CPP, their wives and partners.
But this is not just a book for those blighted by CPP. As other reviewers have made clear, there is much more to it than just the unpacking of a particular health problem. It is a fascinating exploration of personality, a journey through the limitations of modern medicine, an unravelling of the impact of troubles in life and a lesson in how to come to terms with oneself. All told with humour and intelligent asides into the worlds of language, literature and art. There can be few people who would not enjoy and learn something from it.
Tim Parks' symptoms, medical experiences and personal dilemmas have been unnervingly similar to those of my husband. As a woman, it is hard to appreciate quite what the pain must be like and why it is so utterly demoralising. Tim's descriptions have helped me better understand what my husband is going through; and his frankness about the mental anguish of trying to come to terms with a condition that seems astonishingly common yet so poorly understood (and too embarrassing for most people to discuss without sniggering) is hugely refreshing. Then to read his fascinating account of how he managed to come to terms with it all gives hope indeed. It should be required reading for anyone affected by CPP, their wives and partners.
But this is not just a book for those blighted by CPP. As other reviewers have made clear, there is much more to it than just the unpacking of a particular health problem. It is a fascinating exploration of personality, a journey through the limitations of modern medicine, an unravelling of the impact of troubles in life and a lesson in how to come to terms with oneself. All told with humour and intelligent asides into the worlds of language, literature and art. There can be few people who would not enjoy and learn something from it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting ideas and a great read
I loved this book. I came across it via Will Self's website where he reproduces a review saying that it made him laugh and made him cry. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Victoria Field
A wonderful book
I set out to read this against my better judgement as, although I love Tim Parks, one wouldn't expect a woman (no prostatitis, no chronic pelvic pain, no partner suffering with... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Alice Chalmers
Repetitive but a worthwhile message
This book could have been shorter and felt a little padded, nevertheless it was well written and interesting. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Tina P
great
This is a great book, really interesting, i'd never heard of tim parks before reading this book. The way he told this story of discovering meditation is entertaining. Read more
Published 3 months ago by twinkleberry
Stop focuses solely on your mind and body......your spirit is...
A great insight into alternative ways to seek better heath. Tim Parks is a self confessed sceptic but trying to live with unbearable pain leads him on a mission to discover that... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Vital Health
Painful reading, bit worth pursuing.
The first section of this book deals with the excruciating description of his illness and the ways he didn't cope with it. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mr. G. M. Buller
some interesting insights, but not great
The book is about the author abdominal pains and how he came about to address them, from traditional medicine to shiatsu and meditation. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Benoit
refreshingly honest and funny
Refreshingly honest human journey towards being more peaceful with oneself, engaging and funny ! Parks writes in an easy friendly style as if he is chatting to you. Read more
Published 8 months ago by rosewink
Awareness begins where words fail
A vivid illustration of the conceptual flaw at the heart of Western culture, and the way we use it to inadvertently imprison ourselves.
Published 8 months ago by wu-wei
A great book about meditation, kayaking and everything else
Tim Parks was suffering from an undiagnosable illness affecting his ability to wee and causing him to live in terrible pain. Read more
Published 8 months ago by culbin
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