Jenny Diski’s End Notes

One of Ms Diski specialties seems to be finding ways to
Crack us humans open just a little more
I for one will miss her big stick

Gratitude to Giles Harvey for helping me understand, by the background and personal description, Jenny Diski's strange and often captivating writing.

"The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."
--Don McLean

It's the world that should have been institutionalized, never Jenny Diski.

A wonderful way to describe the mentally ill as "spooks and freaks." The Times should be ashamed and embarrassed to have a writer use this description of them.

Thank you, Mr. Harvey, for giving me something I can keep and return to in a future that will be devoid of fresh Jenny Diski pieces.

Just what I need: one more reason to add to my Wish List on Amazon: Diski books, and I will do so happily. Great article and I almost didn't read it because I thought, oh no, another writer dying of cancer and writing about her and it, enough already. Reading about Diski is not about reading about her illness but about her life and that's what we all hope should we never get a diagnosis or come to the final days of our lives: that we have lived life the way we wanted and can look back with some measure of accomplishment.

There are many essays by Jenny Diski available to read for free on The London Review's website, including, in full, several referred to or quoted here by Giles Harvey, about Diski's life with Lessing - and, alas, more recently, with cancer.
The LRB's free offerings include Diski's writings on other topics as well - all of
them ablaze with her incandescent intellect and heart.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/jenny-diski

Needless to say, reading anything written by Diski only leaves one wanting more...

Great article on many levels. I take the LRB and have glanced over Diski's work many times over the years but disliked it. I did mot understand it but thanks to this article, I will be able to at least give it a go. On a visit to London and the LRB bookstore they told me she was going to speak later that evening but I declined to go. I feel very foolish now, in that I would not try to understand a writer who revealed facts about her life that I usually think we should keep to ourselves. As said, great article that led to self criticism, something I, and probably most of us, rarely do.

Thank you, Giles Harvey, for writing a marvelous piece that does not interpret the subject for the reader, but allows us to relate to her in an organic way. It occurred to me that we should be living our lives in the exact way she approaches her own death: "not fighting, losing, winning or bearing." I see the chapters of her life (each title a response to the question, Now What?!) as "that's what is going to happen to me next..." I was so impressed by how she mindfully observed life and so described it - both beautiful and painful. I guess it might be her conditioning as a writer to anticipate a deadline: "What if I don't die in time?" I'm already feeling that loss.

Amazing. She seems like my kind of person. Like me, in fact. And, joy, I've never read her, which means I have that pleasure before me. Doris Lessing, yes, the Golden Notebook, yes.....Diski seems much more interesting. But 'having the last word' is always fun!

Ill myself, unable to keep up with everything, I recently let my subscription to LRB expire. Reading this reminded me how much I miss Diski's writing and views. As soon as I have the energy, will renew subscription, with permission to read her essays and not feel guilty if I don't read the Review cover to cover.

Given my recent diagnosis and impending treatment, I must say this is quite a gem to find. A nice counterpoint to Sack's piece.

Thank you for this portrait, Giles Harvey. What a startling pleasure to have this access to a fully original, fully unsentimental mind. Cliche-o-meter ranking: 0. Diski's kind of terrifying, and you never blinked.

Even if she may not care to provide the rest of us travelers with lessons on life and dying, one can't help but feel instructed.

This is a fabulous article. I am compelled to know more about / read Jenny Diski - having, sadly, not been familiar previously with her work.

Thank you for introducing us to Jenny Diski. What a wonderful being. And lucid writer. May her spirit never fail her.

I have a friend, now deceased, who had only 7 weeks from diagnosis to leaving this life. He was an artist and he surrounded himself with all his friends - even in the hospital. On his last day we were close to 25 people there. He never lost his grace and humor. I remember when his wife said something to him very close to the end that I'm sure Jenny Diski would have disapproved of too, he admonished her in loving but clear words, despite his weakness: 'Darling, that is a cliché.' He was from England. Unsurprisingly.

"...knowing that death is on its way without knowing exactly when it will arrive."

Isn't that how each of us lives at all times, whether we acknowledge it or not?

Giles Harvey should have written "wryly" rather than "in wry poor taste." Nothing poor about her taste.

Great article. Her way of writing seems so refreshing, truthful and modern. Running to get her books...

The uninhibited mind; a fascinating thing. Keep on sharing Jenny.

My heart goes out to Ms. Diski. She seems very brave and a good writer.

New cancer treatments are coming online all the time. There are spectacular breakthroughs happening weekly. Especially in the field of immuno-therapy. Three years is a long time and who knows.

....being admiring her work for years! Original, biting, super realistic, funny...she possess many of the attributes of a top notch, consummate writer...For sure, "Her work will certainly outlast her!!..."...(As Diski would never write)...

A brilliant essay about a brilliant woman.

She is that great, rare spirit: a writer always seeking to do something different.

Having read "Memoirs of a Survivor" years ago, I want to hear Diski's side of things. I had no idea it was based on a real person, and she sounds fascinating.

I love the part when she says she's not going to fight, or be brave, or bare it bravely or lose the battle. Thank you for that. I want to scream when people say you just have to have a good attitude. Will start reading her essays.

We can thank her -- and I will -- for refusing to indulge in any of those amazingly primitive and immature American adjectives for what someone with Cancer ultimately goes through : they lost a battle with, they fought bravely, they died with dignity and grace.
who thinks up this nonsense? Anyone bedside while someone dies knows there's nothing dignified about death. It's embarrassing and intimate beyond even sex.
That's why we cover their faces, to spare them the gazes that will remember them exhausted, o-mouthed, vacant, frightened, or however death decides to do its duty.

If only some of these hacks in journalism land, and writer land (frankly), would cease and desist with this "courageous struggle" fought with "courage and with tenacity" and ...blah, blah, blah.

Good grief.

I am stunned by this piece, but more stunned that I am only the second person to comment. She is amazing. Running out to buy her books.

Wonderful that someone else on this side of the pond loves Jenny Diski. I've been reading her in the LRB for ages, and have always been amazed that she isn't a big thing here, her writing is always just wonderful.