The previous evening, I had been launching my latest book at a successful event in New Haven. The night of the terrible morning, I was supposed to go on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and then appear at a sold-out event at the 92nd Street Y, on the Upper East Side, in conversation with Salman Rushdie. My very short-lived campaign of denial took this form: I would not cancel these appearances or let down my friends or miss the chance of selling a stack of books. I managed to pull off both gigs without anyone noticing anything amiss, though I did vomit two times, with an extraordinary combination of accuracy, neatness, violence, and profusion, just before each show. This is what citizens of the sick country do while they are still hopelessly clinging to their old domicile.
My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was seventy-nine. I am sixty-one. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.
But I understand this sort of non-thinking for what it is: sentimentality and self-pity.
To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
Both wrote to say that their assemblies were praying for me. And it was to them that it first occurred to me to write back, asking: Praying for what?
I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.
Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy.
“Until you have done something for humanity,” wrote the great American educator Horace Mann, “you should be ashamed to die.” I would have happily offered myself as an experimental subject for new drugs or new surgeries, partly of course in the hope that they might salvage me, but also on the Mann principle.
O’Clock Shadow” shows him at his least furry: This is the time of day when we in the Men’s Ward Think “One more surge of the pain and I give up the fight,” When he who struggles for breath can struggle less
I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true.
As this kind of thing became more common, I began to take on the role of morale-booster. When the technician would offer to stop, I would urge her to go on and assure her that I sympathized. I would relate the number of attempts made on previous occasions, in order to spur greater efforts. My self-image was that of the plucky English immigrant, rising above the agony of a little needle-stick. Whatever didn’t kill me, I averred, would make me stronger… I think this began to pall on the day that I had asked to “keep going” through eleven sessions, and was secretly hoping for the chance to give up and go to sleep. Then suddenly the worried face of the expert cleared all at once as he exclaimed, “Well, twelve times is the charm,” and the life-giving thread began to unspool in the syringe.
so many tributes that it also seems that rumors of my LIFE have also been greatly exaggerated.
those who say I am being punished are saying that god can’t think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.