Famous Last Words: Three Memoirs of Mortality | Hacker News Reader

Famous Last Words: Three Memoirs of Mortality

slate.com

16 pointslermontov6 comments

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.

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/

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

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

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

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.

I was expecting "Here, hold my beer."

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