Mortality

Product Information

I didn’t always agree with Christopher Hitchens (war with Iraq, for instance) but I always admired his brilliant mind and I enjoyed his feisty, combative personality. Because Hitchens was an outspoken atheist, I was most curious to read his observations on mortality. These moving and brave final essays were so much more than what I expected. I found them to be deeply thought-provoking and sometimes difficult but compelling to read. My dear friend J., who died of cancer last year, said that there was no such thing as battling cancer. There is no chance of winning; it's a one sided war. Lccn 2012014024 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL25276745M Openlibrary_edition

Creating this b A deeply affecting, urgently important book – one not just about dying and the limits of medicine but about living to the last with autonomy, dignity, and joy.”– Katherine Boo The author died of esophageal cancer in 2011, which was as ironic as was his own caustic wit because he was most famous for his public debates and lectures. He faced his battle with cancer and the torturous cancer treatments with the same fierce courage of conviction that he expressed in his many written essays and public dialogues. As an atheist, he remained true to his beliefs even as he once noted, “If I convert it’s because it’s better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.” How was this possible? Apparently, some Europeans of this period were meticulous record keepers (especially the English and the Italians). And these records are surprisingly still extant up to now. So from papers like bills of sale, wills, receipts, court records, notarized documents registry of deaths and births, etc. the author gave us both the general and personal histories of this horrific event.Update to the spoiler below My son ended up having several surgical procedures and is well on the mend. Today he heard that he passed his finals in law. So now it's on to law school. Thank you everyone for the good wishes. It was a hard year to live through. What I admire most is his perseverance to his craft. Writing really was his reason for living. The way he did his last 19 months, and this book, was about as good a goodbye as anyone could ever hope for for themselves.

For me, his humanistic writing outshines his reasoning, judging from his brief foray in this book into debate over religion and his argument that what doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger. He ignored rather than integrated information or circumstances that didn't support his conclusions.

Soon, it emerges that he has cancer of the oesophagus, the disease from which his father had died at the age of 79. Hitchens is only 61. It is clear that he will give anything to live. "I had real plans for the next decade … Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read – if indeed not to write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?" If you ever saw him at the podium, you may not share Richard Dawkins’ assessment that “he was the greatest orator of our time,” but you will know what I mean—or at least you won’t think, She would say that, she’s his wife. The day I found out that Christopher Hitchens had died was the day I felt as if someone from my own family had perished. Starkman’s diagnosis of cancer means he has weeks or months left to live on this Earth. He shares that these photographs serve as an invitation to “open a conversation on mortality/death as seen uniquely through first-hand experience.” Art in its purest form can serve as a bridge to communicate between artist and viewer, and in that process, there can be an expansion of perspectives. This dialogue is an important element of this project for Starkman. He continues, “The book is about life, as seen from the perspective of death.” I realize that these may seem like small complaints, but I have high expectations for a nonfiction book. I have a hard time with it because I went to this book to learn, and I have difficulty trusting an author's research and expertise on a topic when he cannot bother to understand the meaning of the word "literally".

I cringed as Kelly repeatedly anthropomorphizes both Y. pestis and the plague it caused, as in "Descending through the straits, Y. pestis stopped to pay its respects to Xerxes, the Persian king who built a bridge of boats to ferry his army across the waterway [of the Dardanelles]" (82). How? How did the bacterium stop to "pay its respects"? Kelly doesn't explain, doesn't bother to think through the metaphor he's trying to establish. Classic Hitchens style even in the midst of such physical and emotional distress. The well-written afterword by his widow included some good insights, especially her perspective on the treatment Hitchens pursued and endured, including why. The point is that the medical treatments for the kinds of conditions from which most of us die today are forms of torture. I don’t want to be tortured. I don’t want to suffer. I don’t even want to suffer ‘significant discomfort’ for any extended period of time. I would like to remain conscious and intellectually active for as long as possible but not if such activity is inhibited by the threat 0f constant pain. I would like to experience the presence of my loved ones but in the knowledge that I can consider them, and they me, without pain even if this involves a certain trippiness. Ok, then. Not that living in poop had anything to do with the main subject of this book. It is simply mentioned in passing the fact that Europeans, especially urban Europeans, lived their lives wearing crusted bits of poop 💩 about their bodies and clothes, with piles of poop surrounding their homes for centuries in the Middle Ages, whether they lived in palaces or hovels. This 'natural-fiber' accidental fashion accessory which also served as a domestic health cure for fad-following hypochondriacs in the Middle Ages fascinates me, even more than watching binge drunks trying to function at ordinary tasks.He does still get the last word. I love that this book comes out posthumously. It's as if he is talking to us right now: "And another thing!" Primarily, though, this is a guidebook through a land nobody really wants to visit. Hitchens looks at many facets of the cancer landscape, from the difficulty of communication between those with and those without, the struggle with conscious loss of taken-for-granted faculties, and an eloquent piece pointing out that, in cancer land, there are plenty of things that do not kill you, but absolutely do not make you stronger. The ancient Greeks and especially the ancient Romans had public baths, accessible to all of their citizens for a few pennies. And sewers! They had sophisticated sewers, public bathrooms and public fountains, flowing with water from mountain streams. Drinkable free water! But what were Europeans thinking, seven hundred years after the ancient but clean Romans passed? They were thinking baths are bad and Poop Cures are cool. They drank wine all day, even the children. Hmmmm.