Introduction: Pain and postbellum American sensibilities -- Part one. High realism -- "The taste of life": suffering, literary mode, and Howellsian realism -- "No pain and no consciousness": the James siblings, anesthesia, and suffering -- "The blind dread of physical pain": Edith Wharton against the New Thought -- Part two. Curious realism -- Stubborn fractions: Mark Twain, Christian Science, and pain -- Charles Chesnutt's realist vision -- Epilogue: "True realism" and a "truer world.