SOURCE: "Do Not Go Gentle," in The Nation, March 20, 1995, p. 394.

In the following excerpt, Garner describes A Stroke of Genius as "a brave and lovely book" which "quickly moves well beyond being a survivor's celebration."

In the case of the upstate New York novelist Paul West, who in A Stroke of Genius recounts the various illnesses that have besieged him in recent years—heart disease, diabetes, debilitating migraines—"the sheer majesty of salt" was among the active agents in his physical decline. "Nothing tasted right unless it had been fried," West writes about his restless appetite, but it wasn't until quite late in life, after suffering a serious stroke, that he found that he'd been a "slow suicide whose corroded emblem was the frying pan."

Told that he was likely to die quickly without a pacemaker implant to regulate his faltering heartbeat, West reluctantly agreed. "It was not...