Dying in Character: Memoirs on the End of Life

336 Pages·2012·4.89 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Berman

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Dying in Character
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
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Joseph Conrad: Writing as Rescue
The Talking Cure: Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis
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Diaries to an English Professor: Pain and Growth in the Classroom
Surviving Literary Suicide
Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom
Empathic Teaching: Education for Life
Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning
Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure(with Patricia Hatch Wallace)
Death in the Classroom: Writing about Love and Loss
Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C. S. Lewis,
John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion, and Calvin Trillin
Death Education in the Writing Classroom
D
C
ying
in haracter

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M e m o i r s o n t h e E n d o f L i f e
Jeffrey Berman
University of Massachusetts Press
Amherst and Boston
Copyright(cid:185) 2012 by University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the UnitedStates of America
ISBN 978-1-55849-965-2 (paper); 964-5 (library cloth)
Designed by Sally Nichols
Set in Adobe Garamond Pro
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berman, Jeffrey, 1945–
Dying in character : memoirs on the end of life / Jeffrey Berman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55849-965-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-55849-964-5 (library cloth
: alk. paper) 1. Authors,American—Biography—History and criticism. 2. Ameri-
can prose literature—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Critically ill—United
States—Biography—History and criticism. 4. Terminally ill—UnitedStates—
Biography—History and criticism. 5. Autobiography. 6. Death in literature.
7. Self in literature. 8. Death—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
PS366.A88B45 2013
810.9´3548—dc23
2012030821
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.
For my wife, Julie
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The British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott began an autobiography
that he never finished. The first paragraph simply says, “I died.” In the
fifth paragraph he writes, “Let me see. What was happening when I
died?My prayer had been answered. I was alive when I died. That was
all I had asked and I had got it.” Though he never finished his book,
he gave the best reason to write in the world for writing one, and that’s
why I want to write mine—to make sure I’ll be alive when I die.
—Anatole Broyard
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
ix
introduction
“It Is When Faced with Death That We Turn Most Bookish”
1
1.“I Never Saw or Heard the Car Coming”
My Close Call with Death
20
2.“Death Itself Is a Wonderful and Positive Experience”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and The Wheel of Life
38
3. “With Autobiography There’s Always Another Text, a Countertext”
Philip Roth and Patrimony
75
4.“Death Confers a Certain Beauty on One’s Hours”
Harold Brodkey andThis Wild Darkness
108
5.“I Have Never Been Tempted to Write about My Own Life”
Susan Sontag, David Rieff, and Swimming in a Sea of Death
135
6.“Sleeplessness for Me Is a Cherished State”
Edward W. Said and Out of Place
168
= vii<
viii = Contents <
7.“There Is More Than One Sort of Luck”
Tony Judt and The Memory Chalet
194
8.“I Never Realized Dying Could Be So Much Fun”
Art Buchwald and Too Soon to Say Goodbye
209
9.“Learn How to Live, and You’ll Know How to Die”
Morrie Schwartz’s Letting Go and Mitch Albom’sTuesdays with Morrie
225
10.“I’m Dying and I’m Having Fun”
Randy Pausch and The Last Lecture
240
11.“Now I Cultivate the Art of Simmering Memories”
Jean-Dominique Bauby and (cid:56)(cid:76)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:40)(cid:77)(cid:90)(cid:77)(cid:82)(cid:75)(cid:3)(cid:38)(cid:73)(cid:80)(cid:80)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:82)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:88)(cid:76)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:38)(cid:89)(cid:88)(cid:88)(cid:73)(cid:86)(cid:190)(cid:93)
254
12.“I Live in My Suffering and That Makes Me Happy”
Roland Barthes and Mourning Diary
265
conclusion
Alive When They Died
284
Works Cited
299
Index
313