sic · A Memoir

Joshua Cody, a brilliant young composer, was about to receive his PhD when he

was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Facing a bone-marrow transplant and

full radiation, he charts his struggle: the fury, the tendency to self-

destruction, and the ruthless grasping for life and sensation; the encounter

with a strange woman on Canal Street that leads to sex at his apartment; the

detailed morphine fantasy complete with a bride called Valentina while, in

reality, hospital staff are pinning him to his bed. Moving effortlessly

between references to _Don Giovanni_ and the Rolling Stones, Ezra Pound and

Buffalo Bill, and facsimiles of his own diaries and hospital notebooks,

_[sic]_ is a cross between Susan Sontag's _Illness as Metaphor_ and Jay

McInerny's _Bright Lights, Big City_ : a mesmerizing, hallucinatory glimpse

into a young man's battle against disease and a celebration of art, language,

music, and life.