Hillenbrand fell ill in college and was unable to complete her degree. She shared that experience in an award-winning essay, A Sudden Illness, published in The New Yorker in 2003. Her books were written while she was disabled by myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.[1] In a 2014 interview, Bob Schieffer said to Laura Hillenbrand: "To me your story – battling your disease... is as compelling as his (Louis Zamperini's) story."[2]
Career
Hillenbrand's first book was the acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), a nonfiction account of the career of the great racehorseSeabiscuit, for which she won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001. She says she was compelled to tell the story because she "found fascinating people living a story that was improbable, breathtaking and ultimately more satisfying than any story [she'd] ever come across."[3] She first told the story through an essay, "Four Good Legs Between Us", that was published in American Heritage magazine,[4] and the feedback was positive, so she decided to proceed with a full-length book.[3] The book received positive reviews for the storytelling and research.[5][6] It was made into the film Seabiscuit, nominated for Best Picture of 2003 at the 76th Academy Awards.
These two books have dominated the best seller lists in both hardback and paperback. Combined, they have sold more than 10 million copies,[8] which was reported in 2016 to have increased to over 13 million copies.[9]
Hillenbrand's essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Equus magazine, American Heritage, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, The Backstretch, Turf and Sport Digest, and other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on the horse Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing.[10][11]
Hillenbrand is a co-founder of Operation International Children.[12][13]
Writing style
Hillenbrand's writing style belongs to a new school of nonfiction writers, who come after the new journalism, focusing more on the story than a literary prose style:
Hillenbrand belongs to a generation of writers who emerged in response to the stylistic explosion of the 1960s. Pioneers of New Journalism like Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer wanted to blur the line between literature and reportage by infusing true stories with verbal pyrotechnics and eccentric narrative voice. But many of the writers who began to appear in the 1990s ... approached the craft of narrative journalism in a quieter way. They still built stories around characters and scenes, with dialogue and interior perspective, but they cast aside the linguistic showmanship that drew attention to the writing itself. She was a very obligated to her work.[8]
Personal life
Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, Virginia, the daughter and youngest of four children of Elizabeth Marie Dwyer, a child psychologist, and Bernard Francis Hillenbrand, a lobbyist who became a minister.[14][15][16]
Hillenbrand married Borden Flanagan, a professor of government at American University and her college sweetheart, in 2006.[18] In 2014, they separated after 28 years as a couple, living in separate homes.[8] Their divorce was finalized in 2015.[citation needed]
In January 2015, she was interviewed by James Rosen of Fox News at her home in Georgetown, primarily about how she had written the book Unbroken; Rosen noted her improved health, as the interview had been put off multiple times since 2010 due to her ill health. She mentioned in the interview how her subject, Louis Zamperini, inspired her in facing her own life problems during their many phone calls with his unfailing optimism. She said that Zamperini had read her essay about her own illness,[19] which was partly why he opened up about his life so thoroughly, trusting that she could understand what he had endured. She stated that her primary literary influences were writers of fiction, including Hemingway, Tolstoy, and Jane Austen.[20]
In fall 2015, Hillenbrand made a trip by road to Oregon, her first time out of Washington D. C. since 1990 that did not result in debilitating vertigo.[9] She has lived in Oregon since that trip. She traveled across the US with her new partner, making many stops along the way to see the country. She has reported that taking the trip to "see America" was risky, but her preparations resulted in a successful trip and much joy from adding activities long absent from her life. This was made possible by a disciplined scheme over two years to increase her tolerance to travel without incurring vertigo. The disease is not cured but her capacity is increased.[9]
Chronic fatigue syndrome
At Kenyon College, Hillenbrand had been an avid tennis player, cycled in the nearby country, and played football on the quad.[8] At age 19 and in her sophomore year, Hillenbrand experienced the sudden onset of a then unknown sickness while driving back to school from spring break. She became violently ill and three days later, she could hardly sit up in bed or walk to classes.[21] "Terrified, confused, she dropped out of school" and her sister drove her home.[8] She shuttled from doctor to doctor for a year before being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome at Johns Hopkins.[21] Hillenbrand said it was the most hellish year of her life.[21] Because the name of her illness does not represent the extent of the disease, in 2011 Hillenbrand said of her diagnosis:
This is why I talk about it. You can’t look at me and say I’m lazy or that this is someone who wants to avoid working. The average person who has this disease, before they got it, we were not lazy people; it’s very typical that people were Type A and hard, hard workers. I was that kind of person. I was working my tail off in college and loving it. It’s exasperating because of the name, which is condescending and so grossly misleading. Fatigue is what we experience, but it is what a match is to an atomic bomb.[21]
Hillenbrand's family and friends did not understand her sickness and pulled away, leaving Hillenbrand to battle an unknown disease on her own.[8] She was met with ridicule and told she was lazy during the first ten years of her sickness. In 2014, she said, "'I was not taken seriously, and that was disastrous. If I’d gotten decent medical care to start out with — or at least emotional support, because I didn’t get that either — could I have gotten better? Would I not be sick 27 years later?'”[8]
She described the onset and early years of her illness in an award-winning[22][23][24] essay, A Sudden Illness in 2003.[25][19] The disease structured her life as a writer, keeping her mainly confined to her home. She read old newspaper articles by buying the old newspapers or borrowing them from libraries, rather than using microfilm or other forms of archived news articles, and did all her live interviews by telephone.[8][13]
On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapacitated herself, Hillenbrand said, "I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives – it's my way of living vicariously."[18]
In a 2014 interview, Bob Schieffer said to Laura Hillenbrand: To me your story – battling your disease ….is as compelling as his (Louis Zamperini’s) story.[2] By the time of her January 2015 interview with Ken Rosen, her ability to function had improved after hitting a real low during the writing of Unbroken; she increased her ability to walk down her stairs by taking one step and returning to bed, then some days later, two steps, until she could go down the whole staircase, a process that took several months. When Rosen and his crew met her, she was not having trouble with her balance or with vertigo. When asked about her health, she reported having myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.), formerly called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.[20]
In 2015–2016, Hillenbrand reported changes in her health in an interview with Paul Costello for Stanford Medicine: "Recently, Hillenbrand has made a lot of changes in her medical treatments and in her life. There’s optimism in her voice and a sense of wonderment at new beginnings."[9] Vertigo has been a serious problem for her, so that she had not left Washington D. C. since 1990 because of it. After a disciplined effort to tolerate riding in a car, starting at five minutes and increasing to two hours over two years, she was able to drive out of Washington D. C. after 25 years. She is not cured, "I was not well. I am not well. I am always dealing with symptoms," [emphasis in original].[9] The changes in her health allowed her to make a cross-country trip to Oregon.[9] She has also begun horse riding and bicycle riding, two activities she had not done since the disease struck her in 1987.[9]
Related Research Articles
Seabiscuit was a champion thoroughbred racehorse in the United States who became the top money-winning racehorse up to the 1940s. He beat the 1937 Triple Crown winner, War Admiral, by four lengths in a two-horse special at Pimlico and was voted American Horse of the Year for 1938.
Seabiscuit: An American Legend is a non-fiction book written by Laura Hillenbrand, published in 1999. The book is a biography of the Thoroughbred racehorse Seabiscuit. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and was adapted as a feature film in 2003. It has also been published under the title Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and a Racehorse. The author has been praised for her ability to convey a sense of historical times. The 2003 film Seabiscuit was adapted from the book.
Louis Silvie Zamperini was an American World War II veteran, an Olympic distance runner and a Christian Evangelist. He took up running in high school and qualified for the United States in the 5,000 m race for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, finishing 8th while setting a new lap record in the process.
Robert Thomas Smith was an American Thoroughbred racehorse trainer. Born in a log cabin in the backwoods of northwest Georgia, as a young man he trained horses for the United States Cavalry and worked on a cattle ranch. In 1934, he was hired as a trainer by the wealthy businessman Charles S. Howard.
Meghan O'Rourke is an American nonfiction writer, poet and critic.
Mutsuhiro Watanabe, nicknamed "the Bird" by his prisoners was a known war criminal and Imperial Japanese Army soldier in World War II who served in multiple military internment camps. After Japan's defeat, the US Occupation authorities classified Watanabe as a war criminal for his mistreatment of prisoners of war (POWs), but he managed to elude arrest and was never tried in court.
I Remember Me (2000) is a biographical documentary about chronic fatigue syndrome, filmed in the United States by Kim A. Snyder. The film attempts to show just how devastating the illness can be to afflicted persons.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has a long history with an evolution in medical understanding, diagnoses and social perceptions.
The Lightning Process (LP) is a three-day personal training programme developed and trademarked by British osteopath Phil Parker. It makes unsubstantiated claims to be beneficial for various conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome, depression and chronic pain.
Patricia A. Fennell is the chief executive officer of Albany Health Management Associates. She is a clinician, research scientist, educator, and author specializing in chronic illness, chronic and post-viral syndromes, trauma, forensics, hospice, global health care concerns, autoimmune and post-viral disease, clinical education, and training.
Unbroken may refer to:
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a debilitating long-term medical condition. People with ME/CFS experience delayed worsening of the illness after minor physical or mental activity, which is the hallmark symptom of the illness. Other core symptoms are a greatly reduced ability to do tasks that were previously routine, severe fatigue that does not improve much with rest, and sleep disturbances. Further common symptoms include dizziness or nausea when sitting or standing, along with memory and concentration issues and pain.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption is a 2010 non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand. Unbroken is a biography of World War II veteran Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic track star who survived a plane crash in the Pacific Theater, spent 47 days drifting on a raft, and then survived more than two and a half years as a prisoner of war (POW) in three Japanese POW camps.
Unbroken is a 2014 American biographical war drama film produced and directed by Angelina Jolie and written by the Coen brothers, Richard LaGravenese, and William Nicholson. It is based on the 2010 non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The film stars Jack O'Connell as American Olympian and Army officer Louis "Louie" Zamperini and Miyavi as Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) corporal Mutsuhiro Watanabe. Zamperini survived in a raft for 47 days after his bomber ditched in the ocean during the Second World War, before being captured by the Japanese and being sent to a series of prisoner of war camps.
Rona Moss-Morris is Head of Health Psychology and Chair in Psychology as Applied to Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. Her research investigates long-term, medically unexplained disorders such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). She joined the IoP in 2011 and presented an inaugural lecture entitled "Trials and tribulations: A journey towards integrated care for long term conditions."
Unrest is a 2017 documentary film produced and directed by Jennifer Brea. The film tells the story of how Jennifer and her new husband faced an illness that struck Jennifer just before they married. Initially dismissed by doctors, she starts filming herself to document her illness and connects with others who are home- or bedbound with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
Jennifer Brea is an American documentary filmmaker and activist. Her debut feature, Unrest, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and received the US Documentary Special Jury Award For Editing. Brea also co-created a virtual reality film which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.
Unbroken: Path to Redemption is a 2018 American Christian drama film directed by Harold Cronk, and is the sequel to the 2014 film Unbroken. Because of the much lower budget, none of the original cast or crew returned, except the producer Matthew Baer and actors Vincenzo Amato and Maddalena Ischiale. The film chronicles the rest of Louis Zamperini's story, following his return from World War II. The film features a role from evangelist Will Graham, who portrays his grandfather, Billy Graham.
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness is a 2022 medical memoir by Meghan O'Rourke, published by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The memoir details O'Rourke's decade-long struggle with debilitating chronic illness and the medical system's inadequacy in properly diagnosing and treating her. O'Rourke initially documented her experience in a 2013 piece in The New Yorker titled "What's wrong with me?", and developed the narrative into a memoir. The book was a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
↑ Syracuse Herald-American (July 10, 1955). "E. M. Dwyer, B. F. Hillenbrand Are Married" (July 10, 1955ed.). Syracuse, New York. Retrieved November 9, 2014. Miss Elizabeth Marie Dwyer, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John T. Dwyer of Cortland, became the bride of Bernard Francis Hillenbrand, son of Mrs. Anne Hillenbrand... and the late Leonard Hillenbrand..
1 2 Kulman, Linda (March 19, 2001). "There's no holding this horse". U.S. News & World Report. Vol.130, no.11. p.62.
↑ Hillenbrand, Laura (July 7, 2003). "A Sudden Illness". The New Yorker in CFIDS Association archive. Archived from the original on May 29, 2013. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
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