Jenny Diski

Jenny Diski has been writing in the London Review of Books about her fatal ailments---lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis---and her impending death since September. From the latest installment (Who’ll be last?):

‘I bet you’ve found faith now,’ believers wrote to Christopher Hitchens when he announced he had terminal cancer. He insisted he hadn’t. I’d never been envious of those who believe in an afterlife until now. It would be so much cosier than dissolution. She’s gone to the next room. Nope, can’t manage it. She’s gone to dust and rubble. Gone nowhere. No where to go to. No she to go to it. Much easier to be convinced you will be met in Elysian fields by a thousand virgins, or drink from fountains of Manhattans. I can’t even get close to what they call faith, though I quite see Pascal had a point; and so did Wittgenstein (though quite wrong globally) when he said: ‘Go on, believe! It does no harm.’ I don’t and won’t and there it is...

Diski on Roman Polanski and rape.

Diski's website and her blog.