Diary
A friend commits suicide
“We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each piece, each moment, plays its own game,” Montaigne writes. “And there is as much difference
Chemo Renoir
If only we lived in another century. Our rolls of fat would make us desirable and happy. You might think, as I did, that chemo would lead to
Cancer Gadfly: Walking Back and Working Around
One of the rare pleasures of old age is observing new words jump into circulation. Or appear to jump. We might just have been nodding. But thanks to
Cancer Gadfly: My Envyometer
There’s lots of writing about cancer―memoirs, graphic and prose, blogs, narratological and anthropological studies, science reporting. Most of the writing is bad, by which I mean overly cheerful
The perils of pencils
It’s been impossible not to follow and mourn the crisis in Paris. The attacks have compelled as much attention as the events of 9/11, when we were glued,
Cancer Gadfly: Nothing but blue skies…
Little did I dream while riding on the back of a black Triumph motorcycle in Paris that several decades later I would be invited to picture myself perched
What me worry?: Living with the C. Word.
Having cancer is bad enough without being urged to enjoy your diagnosis, believe you can will it away through your state of mind. And it’s not just nurses
All in the Timing
By the time I was making the final revisions to the Breathless manuscript, I had been diagnosed with lung cancer―“incurable but treatable,” as today’s oncological discourse codes the
Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be.