with [Kathryn] Harrison's research is based on Harrison's experience (recounted in her earlier book "The Kiss") of prolonged incestuous violation by her father: knowledge, in other words, of what it is to salvage one's soul after a massively destructive wound.The narrative of survival may have qualities that alienate and bewilder other people:
"People who cross the threshold between the known world and that place where the impossible does happen discover the problem of how to convey their experience. Some of us don't talk about murders or intergenerational sex within our families. We find words inadequate, or we lose them entirely. Those of us who insist on speaking what's often called unspeakable discover there's no tone reserved for unnatural disasters, and so we don't use any. We're flat-affect; we report just the facts; this alienates our audience."
from Robert Pinsky: The New York Times: Speaking the Unspeakable
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