
Famous Last Words: Three Memoirs of Mortality - lermontov
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/07/nina_riggs_the_bright_hour_and_other_memoirs_by_dying_authors_reviewed.html
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aaachilless
disclaimer: I've read (but am aware of the premises of) none of the books the
article mentions, so I might have misunderstood the message/tone of the
article.

> Like all real literature, it aims above all to tell a truth, however roughly
> it goes down.

I wish this statement and its ilk were less common; in my opinion it's either
a platitude or false. For example, another plausible raison d'etre: to share
an observation. It's not hard to think of others. Now you could say there's
necessarily some higher truth encoded in any meaningful observation. But, in
my opinion, that line of reasoning ends with the quoted statement being a
platitude.

This point could be pedantry, but I make it because I get the feeling the
article's author would say Pausch's "the Last Lecture" is not "real
literature" because it's purpose is mostly to make people feel good.

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fossuser
If you liked When Breath Becomes Air I'd also recommend Do No Harm by Henry
Marsh - it's similar in style (maybe like the book Kalanithi would have
written at the end of his career). It still touches a lot on mortality. Here's
a great chapter from it:
[http://lithub.com/aneurysm/](http://lithub.com/aneurysm/)

I'd also add Hitchens book "Mortality" as a suggestion too.

~~~
schuke
BBC has a documentary on Henry Marsh called The English Surgeon. It's also a
great watch.

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cafard
Stewart Alsop's _Stay of Execution_ is a good deal older (1970s), but I
remember it as very well done.

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miceeatnicerice
Elsewhere in the fertile field of morbid Conservativism, there's good
rumination to be had in the shady corner that is Book III of the _Alan Clark
Diaries_. Despite being likeable and witty, the man's an aristocratic snob, a
bigot, a serial womanizer - and his miserable end, retold explicitly, renders
him palpably futile. The last chapter is written by his observant wife, as he
lies wrapped in sheets gurgling and voiceless.

I pose it as if I enjoyed it, but I didn't - it was a terrifying read. Makes
you wonder, you know, what to do with your own life (which is to plug the gap
with a platitude). Maybe Alan Clark would have been saved if he'd regularly
procrastinated on _Hacker News_? Fingers crossed.

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irrational
I was expecting "Here, hold my beer."

