Unlike the rest of the working wounded, sick writers can turn their health problems into therapeutic books. Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor undoubtedly helped her and thousands of readers deal with cancer. William Styron's Darkness Visible benefited its author as well as others torpedoed by depression.
Wilfrid Sheed's In Love with Daylight (Simon & Schuster; 252 pages; $23) and Paul West's A Stroke of Genius (Viking; 181 pages; $21.95) are similar medical memoirs, kind of Blue Cross specials in which the writers recount their tussles with diseases and the imperfect professionals who treat them. Sheed is a novelist, essayist and critic...
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