"Cancer means that Barnes, who turns 80 on Jan. 19, will spend the rest of his life on chemotherapy drugs. Still, he says, he doesn't grieve for his aging and ailing body. "We are these creatures who come into this earth unbidden, not consulted, and we live a certain amount of time much longer than our ancestors," he says. "But because we live longer, our body begins to break down and the medical costs increase.""
"Barnes' new book, Departure(s), will publish the day after his birthday. Part memoir, part fiction, the book chronicles Barnes' cancer diagnosis and his reflections on death. In a way, Departure(s) is a companion to his 2013 book, Levels of Life, which detailed the death of his wife Pat Kavanagh, who was also his literary agent. (Kavanagh died in 2008, just weeks after being diagnosed with a rare, hyper-aggressive brain tumor.)"
Julian Barnes received a diagnosis of a rare blood cancer six years ago and now requires lifelong chemotherapy. He approaches the illness with calm and a novelist's curiosity, finding medical procedures interesting though occasionally tedious. He does not grieve his aging body and reflects on human mortality and rising medical costs as life expectancy lengthens. Departure(s) blends memoir and fiction to record his diagnosis and meditations on death and serves as a companion to Levels of Life, which recounts the death of his wife Pat Kavanagh. Barnes remarried in August and says the recent months have been unusually eventful.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]