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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
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Memoirs

AN EXERCISE IN UNCERTAINTY

Jonathan Gluck

A Memoir of Illness and Hope

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 uncertaintynever 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. 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.

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Book Published 2025-06-10 by Harmony

Comments

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.

An Exercise in Uncertainty is an exercise in compassion for anyone whose life has been impacted by a devastating illness. Patients can draw upon Jon's thoughtful research, as well as his sharp sense of humor. Family and caregivers will find a lot of themselves in this book; that the best support you can offer a loved one is to continue being unapologetically yourself. For everyone else, the words on these pages are a somber reminder that none of us is immune to the unexpected, and there is nothing more precious than life itself.

Jonathan Gluck examines one of life's greatest challenges with insight and clarity, humility and unvarnished candor, tears and rage, and amazingly humor and hope. I can think of no better guide to help us understand the emotional ripple effects caused by our new miraculous yet tenuous era of medicine. Anyone whose life has been touched by illness (and isn't that all of us?) will find value and wisdom in this priceless, deeply meaningful memoir.

An Exercise in Uncertainty wrestles with universal questions, ones that all mortals face: How do we tolerate a future in suspensionand make plans, fulfill moral obligations, lead a life? How does illness change our self-conceptand our outward-facing selves? Leavened by humor and studded with beautiful moments, this book, ultimately, is a textured and wonderfully honest story about what it means to be alive.

While uncertainty is the theme of An Exercise in Uncertainty, the book is sure-footed and clear-eyed. Gluck navigates the dire straits of mortality beautifully, with eloquence and wit and intelligence. You will want to join him on this intense and human journey.

Jon Gluck has turned the brutal limbo of chronic illness into a smart, warm memoir of his struggle with fear and grief. As medical miracles now allow people to live with cancer for years and decades, Gluck reveals a side effect few patients discuss: the stressful uncertainty that comes from living alongsideas one of his wise sources puts it'an alarm bell that's stuck in the on position.

Every one of us wants to memorize what matters and stop falling for the cheap imitations of meaning all around us. Jonathan Gluck's perfectly conveyed story of managing life on the edge of death will orient and reorient you in your own humanity. He is a gift. This is a gift.

Sure-footedly, Jonathan Gluck wades deep into the swirling currents of chronic disease and returns ashore with a story of authentic hope for our information-addled, uncertain age. At the center of this fine memoir, the reader encounters a rare calm, something akin to grace, that is vital to our collective survival.