In today’s New York Times, this recollection of a classic desi coming-of-age dilemma:

Both his parents are physicians, he added — his father a urologist and his mother a pediatrician — and growing up in Athens, Ohio, he tried hard not to follow in their footsteps. “This idea that a bright Indian kid is supposed to be a doctor — I resisted that,” he said. “I wanted to be a rock star. I played guitar and wrote songs and even had a couple of club shows. I was just terrible.”

So Atul Gawande became… a surgeon. A celebrity surgeon, in fact, thanks to his side practice as a writer; he’s a regular presence in the New Yorker, his book Complications came out last year to critical acclaim — Amardeep wrote about it here — and a new book, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, is out this week.

So now that he’s, like, this author, we get to accompany him into the operating room where we learn that the brother never gave up his love for music; indeed, he gets to inflict his musical taste on the O.R. personnel, though, he allows, “You can’t play anything hard-hitting if there’s anyone over 45.” Thus:

On a recent day, when he took out a gallbladder, two thyroids and what was supposed to be a parathyroid gland but maybe wasn’t, the playlist included David Bowie, Arcade Fire, Regina Spektor, Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, the Decemberists and the Killers.

My favorite bit in the article, however, isn’t about the music but rather about how Gawande found himself becoming a writer, shaking off a dismal experience in college when a writing instructor, in a moment of brilliant teaching technique, “told him that he could write a sentence but had nothing to say.” At some point Gawande started contributing to Slate, and his characterization of writing for that particular outlet is a masterpiece of damnation with faint praise:

“Slate was perfect for me,” he explained, “because it enabled me to fly under the radar. It was just like going through surgical residency. I did 30 columns for them, and it was like doing 30 gallbladders. Then I had to learn how to get comfortable with 4,000-word and then 8,000-word essays for The New Yorker.”

Okay, so he’s had a charmed life; I know plenty of writers who would die for a Slate commission, and the “advance directly to New Yorker” scenario is not exactly commonplace. Oh, did I mention he also has a MacArthur grant? Still, in my book at least, anyone who likens writing for Slate to extracting a gallbladder — and can back it up with actual experience — earns a toast of love, not Haterade. Continue reading →