Not TB or Not TB, Let’s Not TB

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

The book I’ve been recommending to friends lately is called Everything is Tuberculosis.

The author, John Green, became interested in tuberculosis after traveling in Sierra Leone and meeting a charismatic 17-year-old with TB.

And he began researching the disease and he became obsessed with it.

For Green, tuberculosis became a lens for looking at, well, everything.

For example, in terms of history, we learn that cities such as Pasadena, California, and Colorado Springs began as tuberculosis colonies.

In the late 1800s, at the height of tuberculosis in the United States, there were almost as many hospital beds for TB patients as for all other patients combined.

And we also learn about links between TB and the iconic American cowboy hat, between TB and the assassination that sparked World War I, and between TB and the Beatles.

Yeah, the Beatles, because after contracting tuberculosis as a teen, Ringo Starr spent two years in a sanatorium, and that’s where he took up drumming.

We’ve had effective anti-tuberculosis drugs for a decade, but it still kills more people than any other infectious disease.

And that’s because, Green writes, the cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not.

And his book lays out the case for funding TB programs in poor countries.

And the book is also remarkable because he’s quite forthcoming about his own struggles with anxiety and depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.

And as I was reading this book, Grant, I was thinking, gosh, this historian really has some writing chops.

And it was only later that I realized that John Green is also the novelist who wrote the wildly popular young adult novel, The Fault in Our Stars.

Oh.

You know?

And so I wanted to share a lovely passage where Green mentions learning that a young TB patient had been rereading The Fault in Our Stars just before her death.

He writes,

When you write a novel, you’re alone in it.

I wrote that book alone, sitting in airports and coffee shops and lying in bed.

But when writing, there’s always for me a hope that one day I will not be alone.

Not in this work, and not in this world.

It’s a bit like that old children’s pool game Marco Polo, where one person closes their eyes and swims around the pool trying to tag someone else.

Marco, the person with eyes closed, says, and the other pool goers have to answer Polo.

Marco, Marco, Marco, cries one kid.

And the others reply polo polo polo writing is like that for me like I’m typing Marco Marco Marco for years and then finally the work is finished and someone reads it and says polo and Grant I just loved that not only as a writer but just as a human you know I mean anybody who’s trying to be heard.

Maybe you’re the parent of a kid who doesn’t seem to be listening, you know, and you’re standing there saying, Marco, Marco, Marco, and then one day the kid responds.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. I love it. And there’s a really good reason he’s a best-selling novelist.

Yes.

He’s a very good writer.

Yes.

And I love that he tackled the subject out of curiosity and interest in the world.

Exactly.

And so that’s the other side of this coin. To get that polo, you need to be interested in other people when you say Margo.

And he clearly is interested in the lives and the minds and the hearts of other people.

Yes. Yes. I mean, it was not a book that I thought I would necessarily pick up.

I just happened to see it on the bestseller list again and again.

I thought, okay, I’ll give it a, you know, it’s not really something I would necessarily read, but I’m so glad I did.

And the book is called? Everything is Tuberculosis, The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.

By John Green?

By John Green, yes.

We’ll, of course, link to that on the website.

Martha and I are big readers, and we know you are too.

And when you write to us about the books that you’re reading, it makes our day.

So send us an email to words@waywordradio.org, or you can text us to the toll-free number 877-929-9673.