Ellen Wayland-Smith connected cancer treatment, the nature of the universe, and more in her essay reading at the English Reading Series.
If you’ve ever been told to “think outside the box,” you’ve used one of the main strategies of creativity: lateral thinking. This kind of thinking involves creating associations in the brain between seemingly disconnected topics, and it often leads to innovative solutions in a variety of fields. In writing, authors use lateral thinking—particularly in associative essays—to convey concepts or thoughts that we might not otherwise have the language to describe. At her English Reading Series presentation on February 14, 2025, Ellen Wayland-Smith (a professor of writing at the University of Southern California) read an associative essay from her recently published essay collection The Science of Last Things and explored how associative essays can convey difficult experiences—such as a battle with breast cancer—in ways that traditional narrative formats can’t.
Describing the Indescribable
As Wayland-Smith approached her battle with cancer, she found it helpful to change her perspective of the whole experience. In her essay “Natural Magic,” she used lateral thinking to compare her chemotherapy experience to both the infinitely small (microscopic cell processes) and infinitely big (the movements of the cosmos) in an effort to explain her new understanding of the miracle of her own existence. She shared that as she grappled with this concept, she was amazed by how many tiny mechanisms had to work properly in order for her to live—and how those same mechanisms make up the vast architecture of the universe and all the life in it. “Think of what must happen at a cellular level to allow me each morning to twist my hair into a bun,” she said. “[It makes me] realize the almost comical contingency of any single life.”
Wayland-Smith explained that sometimes, in writing associative essays about big subjects, it can be easy to get lost in the philosophical connections between disparate topics. To circumvent this potential issue, she made a concentrated effort to ground her essays in concrete experiences. “I always want to come back to some sort of groundedness in the body,” she said. “I try to make sure that it doesn’t just fall out of control. It’s just routinely bringing it back to a concrete thing that you can visualize.”
A Priority-Shifting Experience
Wayland-Smith said the process of writing this collection has changed her artistic priorities, in large part because dealing with severe illness is a humbling experience that has made her realize just how much her life depends on. “When you come up against the limits of your body and its finiteness and its vulnerability, you realize that you’re not the center of the world,” she said. “Brushes with death heighten our sensitivity to the numinous, bringing us closer to God, or at the very least to a chastened understanding of what really matters in life.”
Find the rest of the English Reading Series lineup for the semester here.