Jonathan Gluck, author of An Exercise in Uncertainty: A Memoir of Illness and Hope
When:
Thursday, Jun 26, 2025 7:00p -
8:00p
Thursday, Jun 26, 2025 7:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Porter Square Books
1815 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02140
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/jonathan-gluck-author-exercise-uncertainty-memoir-illness-and-hope
Porter Square Books is excited to welcome Jonathan Gluck to celebrate his memoir, An Exercise in Uncertainty: A Memoir of Illness and Hope. This event will take place on Thursday, June 26 at 7pm at Porter Square Books (1815 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140).
Our Cambridge store offers validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. See parking details below.
To RSVP for this event while we migrate our website to a new platform, please use this link.
*Please note that you will not receive a confirmation email. However, we will send a reminder email one day before the event. Please check your spam folder if you do not see the pre-event email reminder. Better yet, add [email protected] to your safe sender list to avoid PSB event emails going to spam!
ABOUT AN EXERCISE IN UNCERTAINTY
In this thought-provoking memoir, an award-winning journalist explores the chaos, doubt, and search for meaning that come with staying one step ahead of cancer for decades.
At age thirty-eight, Jonathan Gluck, a new father with a promising journalism career, was shocked to learn he had multiple myeloma, a rare, incurable blood cancer. He was told he had eighteen months to live.
That was more than twenty years ago.
Gluck isn’t just something of a medical miracle. He’s also part of a growing population. Thanks to revolutionary medical advances, many cancers and other serious illnesses are no longer death sentences but chronic diseases people can often live with for years. While doctors continue to look for “magic bullet” cures, they can now extend patients’ lives by slowing the progression of their diseases one treatment at a time. The result is a strange, new no-man’s-land between being sick and being well where Gluck and millions of others reside.
In An Exercise in Uncertainty, Gluck maps this previously uncharted territory. Among the many vexing side effects of chronic illness he explores is uncertainty—never knowing from one day to the next how one’s illness might change them physically, emotionally, spiritually. When you have an incurable disease, how do you cope with knowing that even when you’re in remission, it will eventually return? How do you live with the anxiety, the fear, the near-constant awareness of your mortality? For Gluck, one surprising answer is fly-fishing. If you’re looking for peace in your own sea of uncertainty, it might be something else.
As Gluck will be the first to say, cancer has absolutely nothing good to offer, but almost dying has taught him valuable lessons about how to live.
PRAISE FOR AN EXERCISE IN UNCERTAINTY
“An Exercise in Uncertainty has a powerful and restorative story to tell us. Gluck's life of illness and survival is a vital primer for us all—a lesson in how to face and comprehend two of the basic facts that render us human: we die; but much more importantly, we live.”—Richard Ford
“Navigates the dire straits of mortality with eloquence, wit, and intelligence.”—Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book
“Gluck has turned the brutal limbo of chronic illness into a smart, warm memoir of his struggle with fear and grief.”—Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can’t Sleep
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Gluck is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. He was deputy editor of New York magazine for ten years, after which he worked as managing editor of Vogue. His work has been recognized with multiple National Magazine Awards.
PARKING
Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition offers validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. Roseland Street is accessible by Beacon Street and Mass Ave. When you arrive at the lot, use the screen on the kiosk to get a ticket.
When you're ready to leave, ask for a validation barcode at the cash register. (No purchase necessary.) Parking is free on weekends and weekday evenings from 6PM-7AM. From 7AM-6PM on weekdays the first 45 minutes are free.
Upon exiting the lot, scan your ticket and choose "validation." Then scan the barcode your received from us. If you have an additional charge, you will be prompted to pay after scanning your barcode.
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