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Authors: Christopher Hitchens
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I appreciate that within the profession itself there be not the least concession to any relaxation of that standard. The operators of that famous hospital should be ashamed of the historic role played by their order in the appalling legalization and application of torture, and I have the same right if not duty to be equally ashamed of the official policy of torture adopted by a government whose citizenship papers I had only recently taken out.
VIII
R EMEMBER, YOU TOO ARE MORTAL”— HIT ME AT THE top of my form and just as things were beginning to plateau. My two assets my pen and my voice—and it had to be the esophagus. All along, while burning the candle at both ends, I’d been “straying into the arena of the unwell” and now “a vulgar little tumor” was evident. This alien can’t want anything; if it kills me it dies but it seems very single–minded and set in its purpose. No real irony here, though. Must take absolute care not to be self–pitying or self–centered.
Always prided myself on my reasoning faculty and my stoic materialism. I don’t have a body, I am a body. Yet consciously and regularly acted as if this was not true, or as if an exception would be made in my case. Feeling husky and tired on tour? See the doctor when it’s over!
Lost fourteen pounds without trying. Thin at last. But don’t feel lighter because walking to the fridge is like a forced march. Then again, the vicious psoriasis/excema pustules that no doctor could treat have gone, too. This must be some impressive toxin I’m taking. And a mercy for sleep purposes . . . but all the sleep–aids and blissful dozes seem somehow a waste of life—there’s plenty of future time in which to be unconscious.
The nice men with the oxygen and the gurney and the ambulance very gently deporting me across the frontier of the well, in another country.
The alien was burrowing into me even as I wrote the jaunty words about my own prematurely announced death.
Now so many tributes that it also seems that rumors of my LIFE have also been greatly exaggerated. Lived to see most of what’s going to be written about me: this too is exhilarating but hits diminishing returns when I realize how soon it, too, will be “background.”
Julian Barnes on John Diamond . . .
A bout de soufflé . . . Seberg/Belmondo . Funny how one uses “breathless” or “out of breath” so casually. At Logan [airport]—can’t breathe! Next stop terminal.
Tragedy? Wrong word: Hegel versus the Greeks.
Morning of biopsy, wake and say whatever happens this is the last day of my old life. No pretense of youth or youthfulness anymore. From now on an arduous awareness.
New Yorker cartoon on obit pages . . . Used to notice death–dates of Orwell, Wilde etc. Now maybe as long as Evelyn Waugh.
Amazing how heart and lungs and liver have held up: would have been healthier if I’d been more sickly.
PRAYER: Interesting contradictions at the expense of those who offer it—too easy a Pascalian escape–hatch with me on the right side of the wager this time: what god could ignore such supplications? Same token—those who say I am being punished are saying that god can’t think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.
Nose–hairs gone: runny nostrils. Constipation and diarrhea alternating . . .
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways and soon, I suppose, I shall be swept away by some vulgar little tumor . . .”
Some years ago, a British journalist, John Diamond, was diagnosed with cancer, and turned his condition into a weekly column. Rightly, he maintained the same perky tone that characterized the rest of his work: rightly, he admitted cowardice and panic alongside curiosity and occasional courage. His account sounded completely authentic: this was what living with cancer entailed; nor did being ill make you a different person, or stop you having rows with your wife. Like many other readers, I used to
VIII
R EMEMBER, YOU TOO ARE MORTAL”— HIT ME AT THE top of my form and just as things were beginning to plateau. My two assets my pen and my voice—and it had to be the esophagus. All along, while burning the candle at both ends, I’d been “straying into the arena of the unwell” and now “a vulgar little tumor” was evident. This alien can’t want anything; if it kills me it dies but it seems very single–minded and set in its purpose. No real irony here, though. Must take absolute care not to be self–pitying or self–centered.
Always prided myself on my reasoning faculty and my stoic materialism. I don’t have a body, I am a body. Yet consciously and regularly acted as if this was not true, or as if an exception would be made in my case. Feeling husky and tired on tour? See the doctor when it’s over!
Lost fourteen pounds without trying. Thin at last. But don’t feel lighter because walking to the fridge is like a forced march. Then again, the vicious psoriasis/excema pustules that no doctor could treat have gone, too. This must be some impressive toxin I’m taking. And a mercy for sleep purposes . . . but all the sleep–aids and blissful dozes seem somehow a waste of life—there’s plenty of future time in which to be unconscious.
The nice men with the oxygen and the gurney and the ambulance very gently deporting me across the frontier of the well, in another country.
The alien was burrowing into me even as I wrote the jaunty words about my own prematurely announced death.
Now so many tributes that it also seems that rumors of my LIFE have also been greatly exaggerated. Lived to see most of what’s going to be written about me: this too is exhilarating but hits diminishing returns when I realize how soon it, too, will be “background.”
Julian Barnes on John Diamond . . .
A bout de soufflé . . . Seberg/Belmondo . Funny how one uses “breathless” or “out of breath” so casually. At Logan [airport]—can’t breathe! Next stop terminal.
Tragedy? Wrong word: Hegel versus the Greeks.
Morning of biopsy, wake and say whatever happens this is the last day of my old life. No pretense of youth or youthfulness anymore. From now on an arduous awareness.
New Yorker cartoon on obit pages . . . Used to notice death–dates of Orwell, Wilde etc. Now maybe as long as Evelyn Waugh.
Amazing how heart and lungs and liver have held up: would have been healthier if I’d been more sickly.
PRAYER: Interesting contradictions at the expense of those who offer it—too easy a Pascalian escape–hatch with me on the right side of the wager this time: what god could ignore such supplications? Same token—those who say I am being punished are saying that god can’t think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.
Nose–hairs gone: runny nostrils. Constipation and diarrhea alternating . . .
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways and soon, I suppose, I shall be swept away by some vulgar little tumor . . .”
Some years ago, a British journalist, John Diamond, was diagnosed with cancer, and turned his condition into a weekly column. Rightly, he maintained the same perky tone that characterized the rest of his work: rightly, he admitted cowardice and panic alongside curiosity and occasional courage. His account sounded completely authentic: this was what living with cancer entailed; nor did being ill make you a different person, or stop you having rows with your wife. Like many other readers, I used to
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