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Physical is the story of a hard-living,
happily married, middle-aged American (the author) who gets
a three-day “executive checkup” at the Mayo Clinic and is
thereby forced to confront his mortality, not to mention glove-wearing
doctors and the pair of dominatrix-esque technicians who supervise
his stress test quite strictly. James McManus must understand
his revised actuarial odds in the light of his not-so-long-lived
forebears and the fact that his youngest children are only
six and five years old. He has to survive his own cardiovascular
system, inherited habits, and genetic handicaps long enough
to see Bea and Grace into adulthood. But with so much at stake,
and in spite of his terror of death, he may not have the willpower
to follow the Mayo clinicians’ advice.
On a related health front, McManus’s
twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile
diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration’s
opposition to the stem cell research that could save her life
makes him feel like he “might have to do something rash.”
Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another
child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be
able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful
wife sleeping with the brilliant ophthalmological surgeon
who saved their daughter’s vision? Physical negotiates
the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health
care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the
stem cell research wars. It’s a no-holds-barred, wrenching,
but often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a
privileged generation that can’t believe the party’s
winding down, if not over.
James McManus, the author of Positively
Fifth Street and four novels, including Going to the
Sun, is the poker columnist for The New York Times.
In 2001 he received the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism.
A portion of Physical that appeared in Esquire has been anthologized
in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best
American Magazine Writing, and Best American Political
Writing. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago.
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